One of Colonel Tan’s young staff officers, Lieutenant Zhu, was leaning against a boulder as Shan rode up on his bicycle. Zhu greeted him with a disappointed expression. “Your truck is broken?” he asked as he motioned Shan toward the waiting helicopter.
“My deputy may need it today. Where are we going?”
Zhu did not reply, gesturing to his ears as the engine began to whine and the long rotor turned. Even when Shan repeated the question after they had buckled in and donned their headphones, Zhu only motioned toward the southwest. Ten minutes later they began to follow the Lhasa highway.
Shan found himself watching for the Potala Palace, and as it came into view, a dark ruby against the distant snows, he found himself grinning. Despite Beijing’s relentless efforts to turn Lhasa into a Chinese city, the old Tibetan fortress still dominated the landscape, the rest of the city just a gray smudge below it. He turned away as the expanse of Western-style buildings grew more distinct and watched the outline of the Himalayas on the horizon until the helicopter banked, crossing over the Lhasa River before it began its descent.
The Lhasa Railway Station was only a few years old, built as a temple to Beijing’s ambitions. The huge stone and concrete structure was the terminus of the railway from Qinghai Province in the north, where it connected with trains to the eastern cities. As he studied the squat, heavy building, it looked not so much like a proud public work as another fortress. Construction of the railway, highest on the planet, had been one of the most controversial projects ever undertaken by Beijing. It had sliced into pristine wilderness, cut off ancient migration routes for the wildlife of the high plateau, and most importantly for its Beijing planners, provided fast, easy access into central Tibet for both Chinese immigrants and soldiers.
The parking lot outside the station looked as if it had been built as a vast staging area. Another helicopter already sat in a corner of the massive paved lot. Half a dozen police cars, some with lights flashing, were lined up by the station entrance, the kind of reception usually reserved for visiting dignitaries. At the end of the station half a dozen army trucks waited.
Zhu hurried Shan into the cavernous hall and toward a train which had been isolated at the rearmost platform by an outer cordon of police and an inner cordon of armed soldiers. Colonel Tan was standing by the sleek, green American-made locomotive, an impatient frown on his face, as a man in a business suit harangued him. A second man in an unfamiliar uniform, probably the engineer, listened nervously a step behind the stranger.
The colonel brightened as he spotted Shan and his escort. “Comrade, I commend you to the able hands of my brightest staff officer, Lieutenant Zhu,” he declared, and pulled Zhu in front of the irate man. “I have been explaining to the stationmaster,” Tan said to his lieutenant, “that his train may not leave on the return service until we give him permission. Please,” he added with a hint of amusement, “continue the dialogue, Lieutenant Zhu.” Shan saw now that a soldier with a submachine gun hanging from his shoulder blocked the entrance to the locomotive cab. Tan sobered, and unexpectedly touched his open hand to his temple. “We salute the Chairman’s wisdom,” he said. It was a slogan from one of Beijing’s newest posters and had become a warning to anyone who would challenge the government.
The stationmaster, suddenly looking worried, promptly repeated the slogan.
Tan led Shan down the platform. “You can get on this train and in two days be in Beijing,” he said. For a moment Shan wondered if he should take the words as a threat. “It shouldn’t be so easy. My first time it took me three months to get to Lhasa.”
“Battle tanks do tend to travel more slowly,” Shan observed. Tan’s first experience in Tibet, he knew, had been as commander of one of the armored brigades that had invaded Tibet. His words brought a nostalgic gleam to Tan’s countenance, and they spoke no more until they reached the line of soldiers that blocked off the last car of the train, the only car without a line of windows along its side.
“They call it the utility car,” Tan explained, “mostly used for freight and supplies for the train.”
Shan saw now the angry men, some in Public Security uniforms, some in blue police tunics, who were being kept away by Tan’s commandos. A knob officer and a police officer were having two separate, heated arguments with Tan’s deputies.
“It is possible that there are differing perspectives on jurisdiction here,” Shan suggested.
“Nonsense. The first Lhasa detective who arrived got a broken lip from one of my sergeants,” Tan said as he returned the salute of the soldier who admitted them through the line of guards. “That ended any dispute. They’re just expressing their disappointment now.”
Shan had never been on one of the trains, had only watched in chagrin with crestfallen herders as one had sped over their ancient pastures. Consistent with the boasting in countless newspaper and magazine articles, the car was the epitome of modernity, everything made of shiny metal and plastic. Tan made a point of showing Shan the two chambers for train staff, each with a narrow upper and lower berth, and the tiny washroom they shared, then entered four digits on a wall keypad and with a hiss the door to the rest of the car opened. It was sharply colder in the cargo compartment. Shan could see his breath.
Tan pointed to an electronic control panel on the wall inside the door that had been smashed. “Door controls, temperature controls, oxygen controls all inoperable from this side,” he explained.
Oxygen. Shan remembered reading how oxygen was pumped into the train compartments to ease the altitude sickness many passengers suffered, in addition to the individual oxygen access at every passenger seat. It was why advertisements for the train sometimes claimed the train was pressurized.
They passed racks of food supplies in cartons and large cans, two of which were bulging after enduring the railway’s huge changes in elevation and air pressure, then reached stacks of wooden crates marked prominently with the insignia of the People’s Liberation Army and the words “Munitions, Lhadrung Depot.”
“Most of these are special fuses for the new generation of howitzer shell,” Tan stated in a tight voice. “I keep telling them we should move them in military convoys, but some clerk always comes back with proof of the great savings to be had by rail transport. Just a way to make up some of the train’s operating losses.”
“Surely no one would try to steal your munitions,” Shan stated.
The colonel did not reply. He continued to a space where a single large crate had been packed between the higher stacks, creating a little alcove. Quilted packing pads, used to cushion cargo, had been piled in a heap on the solitary, four-foot-high crate. Tan lifted the pads and tossed them in the aisle. Shan froze, then stepped back.
“My men were on board for the cargo as soon as the train stopped. They called me immediately.”
The dead man sitting on the crate was Chinese, in his forties. His arms were wrapped around his knees. His fingertips were dark blue, his fingers a lighter shade. His face, contorted in pain, had a distinctly bluish tint. His eyes stared out in silent anguish.
“He’s blue,” Tan observed.
“Cyanosis,” Shan said. “Pulmonary edema.”
“Meaning?”
“His body couldn’t adapt to the low oxygen at the high elevation. Fluid built up in his lungs. Although with the heat off in here he may have frozen to death before the fluid killed him. Was he an escort to your cargo?”
“No. The cargo was checked and the gate locked in Xining. Nearly twenty-four hours ago. The entry can be opened only by entering the code on that keypad.”
“Did he carry identification?” Shan asked.
“No one wanted to touch him. One of my soldiers said he had been possessed by one of those blue-faced demons you see in old Tibetan temples. No one went near after that.”
“Public Security will have procedures they will want to follow.”
“To hell with them. It’s not the first time someone has died on these trains. They will just reprint the usual press release, lamenting another accident caused by the ill health of the passenger and issue a reminder to the public to consult the doctor on board when they travel. I don’t need that. I need the truth. You’re my Special Investigator. What are your procedures?”
“There’s a doctor?”
“Every train from Xining has one.” Tan anticipated Shan’s next question and turned to the officer who was waiting down the aisle. “Find the doctor,” he called out.
Shan clenched his jaw and reached out. The dead man’s limbs would not move, though he could not be sure if it was from rigor mortis or from being frozen. If he was going to find a wallet, he would need help moving the body. He pulled back the man’s heavy sweater and explored his shirt pocket, extracting a worn identity card and two business cards.
“Sun Lunshi,” he read from the official identification, then confirmed that the same name was on the topmost business card. “From the Institute of Applied Geophysics.” He stared at the logo of three interlocked mountains on the card, exactly as Marpa had described it from the van in Yangkar.
Tan took it from his hand and cursed as he read it.
“You know them?” Shan asked as he glanced at the second card. Dakini Delights, it said, over the legend Exotic drinks, exotic dancers, exotic adventures.
“I know the Institute. They show up at every big infrastructure project.”
“Infrastructure,” Shan repeated. “Like the Five Claws project.”
Tan frowned. “Half the Institute’s people are real scientists and engineers, the other half politicos who make sure the scientists plan their projects in a manner that achieves Party goals.”
“Which was he?” Shan asked.
“No idea.”
“Four of his colleagues were in Yangkar yesterday.”
Tan’s anger was instant. For a moment Shan actually thought he was going to slap the dead man. “They’re supposed to clear travel in Lhadrung with me,” he growled. “What the hell were they doing?”
“If you recall, Colonel, I was with you, watching a Tibetan hail chaser. They apparently took fixes on nearby mountains and photographed much of the town, including my station.” Shan looked back at the crate the man sat on. It did not have the army markings. “Were they shipping something with your munitions?”
“Of course not!” Tan snapped, then cursed as Shan pointed to a label on the crate bearing the Institute’s logo. The colonel summoned another staff officer, and as the officer received his orders and stepped away, Shan stopped him with one more request.
Tan remained in front of the dead man, fixing the body with a baleful stare, as Shan explored the cargo compartment. Tan was, Shan suspected, furious that the man had not survived to receive the colonel’s wrath. The quilted pads yielded nothing but a few bloodstains. The stacked crates were heavy, but two near the rear door had been knocked askew. On the small window of the rear door, beyond which soldiers waited with hand trucks, Shan discovered a smear of blood, six feet from the floor.
The doctor and the conductor both looked like they would try to flee at any moment were it not for the two fierce-looking soldiers who herded them toward Tan. The uniformed conductor was angry, and the tall, thin doctor clearly frightened.
“You have no authority over the railway company!” the conductor growled as he approached. “Our schedules are set by Beijing! They may not be disrupted! Our sky train is a national treasure! The stationmaster is calling a general in Lhasa this very minute!”
Tan smiled and stepped aside, revealing the frozen corpse. The conductor gasped and staggered backward, colliding with the crates behind him. The doctor clutched his belly, ran to the rear door and opened it in enough time so that most of the contents of his stomach made it on the tracks outside. The waiting soldiers erupted with laughter.
“Do you recognize him?” Tan asked the conductor. “A passenger? Or perhaps a stowaway?”
“Look at him!” the conductor sputtered. “How could I—” his words choked away.
“Imagine him less blue,” Tan suggested.
“Sun Lunshi,” Shan offered. “His name was Sun Lunshi. Search your manifest.”
The conductor still stared, so transfixed that Shan was not sure he had heard. Then he extracted an electronic device from his tunic pocket.
The doctor summoned enough courage to bend over the dead man, muttering under his breath. “I can’t be responsible for someone who hides!” he protested. He looked up at the colonel. “You must make it clear this one did not seek any assistance!” The physician was clearly not as concerned about the death as he was about his own reputation.
“How many deaths have you had on board the trains?” Shan asked.
The doctor shrugged. “Several each year. They usually just stop breathing in their seats. Older people mostly, out for a little adventure in Tibet. They don’t bother to read our literature that points out that Beijing has an elevation of one hundred forty feet and the train takes them to sixteen thousand feet. We very clearly recommend in our brochures that they spend two or three days acclimatizing in Xining but almost no one does.” He lifted one of the man’s hands, which seemed to be thawing. “Look at the cyanosis!” He grew more eager. “Can I take photographs?”
“When the army is done,” Shan said.
“Coach B, Seat 21A,” the conductor announced behind Shan. “One-way ticket.”
The doctor bent to examine the dead man’s eyes. “One-way is right,” he murmured.
“So he was a paying passenger,” Shan said, glancing at Tan. “One of the lieutenants will go with you to collect any luggage and belongings at his seat.” Tan nodded his approval.
“Of course,” the conductor said, with obvious relief. By now it was not clear if he was more uncomfortable with the dead man or with the colonel.
Shan turned to the doctor. “It was pulmonary edema then?”
“Yes, of course. Look at the fingers.” He pointed to the mouth, where a pink crust was melting. “Look at the color of that sputum. A textbook case.”
“Which makes it natural causes,” Tan said to the doctor, though he was pointedly looking at Shan, warning him not to argue.
“Yes, yes. The autopsy will find his lungs full of fluid.”
“Thank you, Doctor. You may share your conclusion with the detectives waiting outside so they understand no crime was committed. The body may be removed as soon as we clear out my cargo.”
“They will want to see the scene just as he was discovered,” the doctor said.
Tan gestured toward the crates that bore the insignia of the People’s Liberation Army, then leaned toward the doctor and lowered his voice. “National security, comrade,” he stated. “National security.” The doctor’s eyes went round, and he vigorously nodded. “When Public Security asks, it was natural causes, an accident.”
“His employer had cargo here,” Shan inserted, pointing to the large crate. “He came to check on it. He didn’t recognize the onset of his altitude sickness. He became dizzy and fell against the control panel after the door behind him closed. Unfortunately, there was no way for him to get out, no way for him to alert someone to save him. He couldn’t go out the rear door with the train speeding through the mountains. He sat and piled blankets around him, thinking he would just ride that way to Lhasa. But to be complete, you will have the usual tests done and report back to Colonel Tan with the results.”
The doctor began backing away. He looked frightened again. “Of course,” he agreed. “Very straightforward.”
“Excellent,” Tan observed to Shan as the doctor hurried down the corridor. “The simplest stories are always the best.”
“Just so long as you don’t confuse it with the truth. Two people were in here. They fought, probably just with their hands. Crates were pushed about. Someone hit the back window, probably with his head, leaving a smear of blood. It wasn’t Sun. His head shows no such mark, and he wasn’t tall enough to leave a smear so high on the window.”
“Another passenger, you mean.”
“The train is essentially sealed. It’s like a spaceship for the last twelve hundred miles. Yes, another passenger, though I have no idea how the second man escaped with the inner door jammed and the train racing through the night.”
“The other passengers are all gone.”
“Your cargo is intact. It’s the Institute’s loss, not yours. Do you really want to push harder?”
“The Institute invaded my county, and my military transport. Now they’re probing your town. Yes, I want the truth.”
“Then I want to know exactly why Metok Rentzig was executed and who prosecuted his case.”
While the soldiers unloaded the cargo and Tan called his office, Shan wandered around the station. It wasn’t only passengers who used the station. Tourists would come just to see the famous sky train, and a few now stood beyond the cordons of soldiers, taking photographs of the sleek machine. Some monks, probably staged there by the travel service, rang little tingsha cymbols and greeted people with mantras at the entrance. A group of Japanese travelers took their photographs, followed closely by a crowd of Chinese senior citizens. A Western couple wandered around the kiosks of tourist merchandise, where stuffed snow lions and mugs with the Chairman’s picture were prominently displayed. Another Westerner sat at a booth that sold tea and soft drinks, snapping photographs of the monks, the trains, the policemen, and the soldiers. Shan glanced around for the Public Security patrol that should be warning him not to take images of the Chinese military or police. Too much interest in soldiers or knobs could get foreigners ejected from Tibet.
An ambulance, lights flashing, pulled up at the entrance and attendants hurried in with a stretcher. Shan lingered in the shadows, watching the brief commotion at the end of the platform before the attendants, now escorted by soldiers, carried a lumpy burden under a blanket toward the ambulance. The station patrol appeared, shouting at the Westerner and other tourists to stop photographing the events. The stretcher passed Shan, a few bluish fingers dangling out of the blanket. Public Security knobs began pushing back observers, ordering tourists onto their buses. Shan glanced at the tea stand. The Westerner had disappeared. Tan was marching toward Shan, ready to leave.
Shan made his way to a lingering group of Chinese tourists and picked out an affluent-looking man with an expensive Japanese camera. He flashed his badge. “I need to see the photographs you were just taking,” he announced.
The man paled. “Officer, I never meant—”
“Quickly!”
The frightened tourist fumbled with his camera, then a picture of the stretcher emerged on the screen at the back of the device. “Earlier,” Shan said, and the man began scrolling through photos. He stopped the man on the fifth image. At the edge of the photo he could see the lean Westerner with short-cropped graying hair at the tea stand. “Can you enlarge that part?” he asked, pointing at the Westerner. The tourist complied, until the man filled half the screen. Clearly visible on his forehead was a red-tinged bruise.
There was no sign of the Westerner anywhere when Shan rushed outside. Buses were pulling away. Tan was waiting. “You’re coming back with me,” the colonel declared. “The file on Metok will be waiting for you.”
At the top of the tired old building where Tan still kept his office in Lhadrung, the colonel’s steadfast assistant Amah Jiejie greeted Shan with a cup of tea then took him into a conference room where a foot-high stack of papers awaited him. The matronly, ever-cheerful administrator opened the curtains and pulled a notepad and pencils out of the cabinet along the wall. “The colonel said it was better to ask for all corruption cases in the past five years than single out just one.”
“The colonel is a chess player,” Shan observed.
She extended a finger to a thin file not on the stack. “Not much there I’m afraid.”
The dossier contained fewer than a dozen pages of evidence and a two-page case summary prepared by the lead investigator, Lieutenant Huan Yi of Public Security in Lhasa. Metok Rentzig had been a member of the Party—otherwise he would never have been eligible for his post as deputy engineer at the Five Claws project—so he was subject to the jurisdiction of the relentless Central Commission for Discipline. The data sheet affixed to the inside cover of the file showed that the defendant grew up in central Tibet, had been a star pupil, and received an engineering degree from the university in Chengdu, under the name Chou Folan. His residence was in Lhasa, where his wife and teenage daughter lived. He had been working on a highway project west of Lhasa when he had been reassigned to a special projects team, and weeks later was transferred to the Five Claws site. That Metok had received high praise for his work performance was mentioned only briefly in the case summary, which focused on four key pieces of evidence. First, and central to the case, was a copy of a Hong Kong bank account in Metok’s name with a sum exceeding two hundred thousand American dollars—foreign currency being mentioned since it always gave an unpatriotic flavor to a crime. The rest consisted of three affidavits. One was from a Public Security officer in Hong Kong named Daoli who certified that the money had been put in Metok’s account by a contractor on the hydro project. The second was from Lieutenant Huan himself, stating that he had discovered evidence that the contractor had provided substandard work that had been approved by Metok. The last was an extraordinary statement by the same officer Daoli, dated after his first statement, that he actually recalled seeing Metok in Hong Kong on the very date that the illicit bank account had been opened and had confirmed it by locating a hotel reservation for Metok on that date—although the hotel documentation was conveniently not provided.
It was the flimsiest of cases. The trial had been conducted in secret due to its political sensitivities, and Metok’s request for an appeal had been denied. He had been executed a week after the verdict. Shan read the file a second time, then examined the front of the file and the personal data sheet taped inside it. He peeled away the top of the sheet. Something had been stapled there, and removed, replaced by the taped sheet. He braced his head in his hands as the scene of the Tibetan’s execution returned, unbidden, to his mind’s eye. Every instinct inside Shan told him Metok had not been guilty of corruption but had been urgently eliminated for another reason. If that was the case, Shan had not witnessed an execution. He had witnessed a murder.
Metok had made a gesture with his hand before his death, then offered a mantra. Shan recalled the scene in his mind’s eye, focusing on Metok’s hand and his words. Shan had mistakenly thought the engineer had made a mudra, a Buddhist sign of devotion, when he had curled his fingers. But he had been imitating claws with his fingers and thumb. He had been signaling the Five Claws Dam. His words, moreover, had been a very special, very old mantra directed at the central deity on the wall of the former chapel. He had summoned the fierce red protector goddess.
Shan stood at the window gazing toward the government complex at the edge of town. Once there had been a temple there. His gaze drifted toward the northern mountains, toward the hydro project, then toward Yangkar.
Shan returned to the ever-attentive Amah Jiejie and asked if that morning’s security video footage from the station could be electronically sent to her computer, and whether she had the file on Yankay Namdol, the Tibetan recently released from the Shoe Factory.
“The sorcerer?” she asked with a mischievous smile. “Of course. I can’t tell you how many times the colonel has read it.” She disappeared into Tan’s office and moments later put the file in Shan’s hand, then picked up the phone for the call to Lhasa.
The file on the soft labor prisoner Yankay Namdol was much thicker than that of the executed engineer. It held the service records of the two dead soldiers from the convoy in the mountains, a lengthy statement by the Public Security officer in charge which read like a prosecutor’s opening in a trial, an investigative report into the hail chaser’s background, and even a bizarre statement that the officer had obtained from Bureau of Religious Affairs saying that, based on historical records, it seemed there were individuals in Tibet who knew secrets for controlling the weather and the Bureau had no way to prove that they could not. Shan paused over the conclusion of the Public Security officer, who stated that he had witnessed murder by “remote means.” The officer, Shan recalled, had been taken off the promotion lists for three years and transferred to a desk job in Lhasa, both at Tan’s insistence. Lieutenant Huan Yi had effectively been demoted and exiled from Lhadrung.
Shan hesitated, looking at the name again, and then searched the Metok file for the name of the Public Security officer who had supported the engineer’s prosecution. Huan Yi. The same officer who had been disciplined for his handling of the deaths in the northern mountains had later assembled the case that caused Metok’s execution. Amah Jiejie was on the phone, speaking with uncharacteristic impatience, as Shan walked past her to Tan’s office. “You never told me why you took me to see the hail chaser released,” he pointed out to the colonel. “You said there was trouble coming. It could only be because you had already found trouble. You meant more trouble.”
Tan rose from his desk and closed the door, then stood at his window, staring in the direction of his prison camps for several breaths before turning to Shan. “Six weeks ago I was at a meeting at the new supply depot. My driver waited in the car. It was cold so he kept the engine running. When I returned to the car he was unconscious.” The colonel opened a drawer in his deck and tossed a wad of cloth at Shan. “This had been stuffed in the exhaust.”
Shan straightened the cloth. It was a Tibetan prayer flag.
“Three weeks later I came to the office not long after dawn. Amah Jiejie wasn’t here yet. I went to look for something at her desk. This had been left in her chair” Tan said. He extracted another object and dropped it on his desk. Shan studied it, confused, then picked it up. It was a bundle of sticks wrapped with a vine. Inserted in the sticks was the cutout image of a skull. Pasted to the back side of the skull was a small photograph of the Dalai Lama.
“You saw the hail chaser,” Tan said. “He had a bundle of sticks like this. It was recorded in the crime report.”
“A bundle of dried juniper, yes. The fragrance attracts the deities. But this isn’t juniper.” Shan pulled out the image of the skull. “It would have been blasphemous to do this. No Tibetan left this on the chair.”
“My driver would have died if I had returned a few minutes later.”
“Not Tibetans,” Shan said again.
“So I was made to understand.” Tan returned the objects to his drawer. “Don’t tell her.”
“Who led you to understand it wasn’t Tibetans?” Shan asked. But then Amah Jiejie opened the door and motioned Shan back to the conference room.
Tan’s assistant, showing no sign of her argument with someone in Lhasa, sat Shan in front of a computer screen and showed him how to view the video sent by the Lhasa railway security office. When he fumbled with the controls she pulled a chair beside him and asked what they were looking for. Shan had her freeze a frame and pointed to the Westerner sitting at the tea shop. “Where did he come from and where did he go?” Shan answered.
She played the images in reverse, until the lean Westerner with the smear of blood on his forehead rose and walked backward from the platform. “He came off the train,” she said. “The same train, though he carries only one small knapsack for luggage.” She played the image forward at triple speed, putting her fingertip below the man sitting with his tea, taking photographs. Shan could see his own shadowy image at the edge of the screen. Amah Jiejie traced the man as he rose and blended into the crowd of tourists being ushered outside and onto waiting buses. The stranger boarded a city bus, not one of those chartered to tour groups.
“What can you do about getting the names and nationalities of the passengers on that train?” he asked.
“The travel service will always have the—” she began, then looked over Shan’s shoulder. Behind Shan, Tan was standing with an obviously frightened Tibetan man in tattered denim clothing. The colonel’s face was even more gaunt than usual. “Jampa has information,” Tan tersely declared, then motioned the Tibetan into the chamber.
“Tell Inspector Shan exactly what you told me,” Tan ordered the gray-haired man as soon as he sat at the table. Jampa had difficulty speaking. His hands were shaking. He was sitting, defenseless, before the dreaded warlord of Lhadrung. He opened his mouth once, then again, but no words came out.
“He’s shy,” Tan said, and ignored Shan’s confused glance. Tan seemed to know the old Tibetan.
Amah Jiejie brought in a thermos of tea with a tray of biscuits and spoke comforting words as she poured the tea. When Jampa just stared at his cup, Tan rose, appearing more embarrassed than impatient, and disappeared into his inner office. He returned moments later with three bottles of beer, which only added to Shan’s puzzlement. Then he glimpsed Amah Jiejie standing in the shadow just outside the door, gazing at the man with a sad smile. Suddenly he recalled how she had confided to him months earlier that Tan had befriended the Tibetan janitor who cleaned his office.
Jampa took a long swallow from the bottle Tan pushed in front of him, then spoke in a whisper. “He was a good man, I could tell.” He looked up at Shan. “You’re the constable who used to be in prison.” Shan nodded. “You were there. I saw you in the front row.”
With a sudden chill Shan realized he had seen Jampa before, washing gobbets of Metok’s brain off the wall.
“He gave me a note two days before, when I was cleaning in front of his cell.” The old Tibetan wiped moisture from his eyes. “I’m sorry. Maybe I could have saved him. I was so scared. Last year they sent the prior janitor to the Shoe Factory just for talking with a prisoner. They said it showed reactionary sympathies.” A sob wracked the old man’s body and he burst into tears. Tan put a hand on Jampa’s shoulder. When he collected himself, he reached into his pocket and produced an envelope which was stained with what looked like blue-green soap. Inside was a ragged piece of toilet paper with a hastily scrawled note.
I am not here because of what they say, it said. I am here because the American woman and the archaeologist were killed in front of me and not where they said they died. Find someone who lives by the truth. Warn Sun Lunshi. Metok.
Shan’s spine turned to ice. He exchanged an anguished glance with Tan.
“They can’t know I came here,” Jampa said.
Tan stared at his bottle. He understood the bitter irony of making such a statement to the county governor and his chief inspector. Shan studied him, suddenly as interested in the colonel as Jampa. The old janitor had come to Tan when he wanted to find someone who lived by the truth. “No,” the colonel said. “They can’t know.” He looked at the tormented Tibetan. “You couldn’t have stopped his killing, Jampa,” the colonel offered in comfort.
“I pray for his forgiveness every night,” Jampa said.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Shan said.
Jampa said nothing but seemed to be weighing Shan’s words. He scrubbed at an eye again. “Then I will pray for his eternal soul, and of the other two who were murdered, the American and the archaeologist.”
“What American?” Shan asked. “What archaeologist?”
“I didn’t know. My nephew has a computer. He searched some newspaper reports,” Jampa explained. His voice was growing hoarse. “There was an American student and an archaeologist from Chengdu who died in an automobile accident an hour west of Lhasa. You know the kind of story. Sudden storm, a high cliff, and a sharp turn. Their names were Natalie Pike and Professor Gangfen.” He shrugged. “It’s all I know. Please, I have to get to work.”
“Did the other name mean anything to you?” Shan asked the janitor. He pulled out the second business card he had taken from the body on the train, then decided not to ask the old Tibetan about the exotic bar in Lhasa. He had examined the card on the helicopter ride to Lhadrung. On its back was scrawled 75 curry 2 above the word gymnast. He looked up and saw Jampa was staring at him. “Sun Lunshi. Did that mean anything to you?”
“Nothing. But I thought you would find him and give him the warning. Perhaps he is in danger too.” Tan and Shan exchanged a troubled glance. Sun Lunshi was beyond warning.
Tan took out a cigarette and pushed the pack to the old man, who gratefully extracted one and accepted a light from Tan. They sat in silence, drinking and smoking, until Jampa drained his bottle and rose.
Ten minutes after the distraught janitor left, Shan found the article and printed a copy for Tan to read. An American graduate student from Maryland named Natalie Pike had been driving in the mountains with Professor Gangfen when their car had encountered an unexpected patch of ice and went off a cliff-face road. Pike had been on a special research project, assisting the professor with an excavation of a Chinese army camp dating back to a campaign in the early eighteenth century which, the government-owned paper emphasized, was demonstrating the lengthy and historic presence of the Chinese government in Tibet.
When Shan finally spoke, it was in a whisper. “Metok witnessed their deaths. He was at the hydro project.”
Tan replied in the same low, tight voice. “Why would they be at the Five Claws? Their archaeology work was over a hundred miles away.”
Amah Jiejie, sensing Tan’s dark mood, said nothing as she laid a sheet of paper on the table. It was the list of passengers from the train. Shan ran a finger along the column of nationalities. There had been six Westerners on board. Three were German women traveling together. The other three had been a Canadian couple and a solitary American. He stared at the American’s name, then circled it and pushed the paper to Tan.
“There was an American who traveled on the train but stayed in the station and took a great interest in that body,” Shan declared.
Tan’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the name. He cursed under his breath.
“I saw him,” Shan said. “He had a bloody bruise on his head. He is the one who fought in the cargo car with Sun Lunshi. Cato Pike is his name. He has to be the father of the dead American woman.”