Shan watched from the open top of the old gate tower as the two black helicopters landed on a field outside of town. He felt utterly drained. His life had been built around his son, at first aimed at just keeping Ko alive in China’s cruelest prisons, later at creating the barest spark of light at the end of the miserable tunnel that was his imprisonment. But he had failed his son. He had extinguished that light and thrown his son into the jaws of Lau’s vengeful machine. Military prisons in China forced inmates into a merciless, medieval servitude. A man like Lau would think nothing of creating a file that labeled Ko a soldier, a deserter perhaps, branded as a violent, unpatriotic repeat offender. If the general took him, Shan would lose all touch with Ko, would have no way of learning where he was, no way of knowing if he lived or died.
“It is a chess game,” said Jinhua, standing at his side. The two men had stood in silence, waiting, for so long that Shan had forgotten he was there. “Lau and Yintai play chess games. Not every trap results in checkmate.” The young lieutenant, at first so bold, then so fearful, now had a somber determination in his eyes. Shan had repeatedly tried to convince him to leave, but Jinhua insisted that his duty to his dead partner would not let him flee. He would stay as long as Lau stayed.
Shan knew the Public Security officer was trying to calm him, but Shan was beyond being calmed. “A chess game where the captured pieces die,” Shan rejoined. He turned back toward the square, where a beat-up old cargo truck was parked, and signaled to the figures gathered there. When they had faded into the alleys, he gazed back toward the field where the helicopters had landed. Lau had dispatched a utility vehicle to meet his aircraft, and Shan watched as four figures climbed into the distant car before descending the worn stone stairs. For centuries the tower’s gate had welcomed the Dalai Lamas with entourages of holy men, who healed the sick. Now it was for demons in dark fatigues who sapped the souls of men.
Shan forced the emotion from his face and greeted Captain Yintai with an impassive nod as he climbed out in front of the station. Yintai made a show of pointing to a bandage on his head. Lau emerged with his security detail, lit a cigarette, and made an impatient gesture toward his aide. Yintai and Shan stared at each other. The only movement was by Lodi, who was inching forward from the alley, showing a boyish curiosity over the soldiers and their weapons. Yintai glanced irritably at the boy, then reached into a pocket for a pack of cigarettes. As he pulled it out, a small disc fell out of his pocket and rolled toward Lodi, who scooped it up and darted to Shan’s side.
Yintai extended his hand to the boy. “Give it back,” he growled.
Lodi did not comply but instead lifted his hand to his mouth and murmured into it. Yintai angrily grabbed his wrist. “This is Yangkar, not Buzhou,” the boy stated. Shan placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder, frightened now of the strange game the boy was playing.
Yintai pried the hand open then spat a curse and stepped back. There was no disc in the boy’s hand, but rather a large black beetle. “Yangkar, not Buzhou,” the boy repeated defiantly, then raised his palm as if offering the beetle to Yintai. For a moment the cruel arrogance that seemed permanently etched on Yintai’s face was replaced with an uneasy confusion, then he raised a hand to strike the boy.
“Enough!” Lau snapped. Lodi broke away and ran toward one of his climbing trees in the square. Yintai stepped to Lau’s side, a lightless grin back on his face.
“The general is prepared to be generous,” the captain declared in an oily voice. “You can stay in office. If there’s no more trouble we will return your son to Tan’s prison in two years.”
“You were ravaging the home of a respected citizen in Lhasa, a former law enforcement officer. There are judges who would throw out a case against someone who inflicts injury in stopping a crime.”
Yintai seemed to relish Shan’s resistance. “A prisoner convicted of violent crimes on brief parole from a hard-labor camp, traveling without authority outside his county, was caught looting a home. I could have shot him and no one would have complained. One less worthless hooligan to deal with.”
“You mean no one would have lived to complain. Like that woman in Beijing? She was only twenty-three. When she got on her bike that morning, she never expected to end her day as a smear on the pavement.”
Yintai hesitated, glancing at Lau, then cocked his head, staring at Shan with a new, intense interest.
“The constable is distraught, captain,” the general observed in an airy voice. “Unhinged even. We should finish our business and let him nurse his bitterness in private.”
“You didn’t come to Lhadrung County because you heard about two dead soldiers,” Shan said. “Their bodies weren’t even discovered until the day you arrived. You came because a foreigner was reported in the Ghost Mountains. I keep wondering, how could you have known? It’s like one of those old riddles that keep you awake at night. Then you discover the answer, and it seems so unlikely it keeps you up another night. How could you have known? How could you have come so quickly? It’s because you communicate with ghosts. Most people would lie awake because they fear ghosts. But you, you own your own ghosts, who conduct your unfinished business here.”
A thin smile creased Lau’s face but he said nothing.
“The army has hard-labor prisons that are chemical factories,” Yintai put in. “A phosphorus plant, that’s my personal favorite. Little dollops of phosphorus solution splash from the machines. When they dry out they burst into white flame. You can’t extinguish it, just have to let it burn out. Every inmate has scars over scars. Most have their hair burnt away in the first few weeks. Once when I visited, there was a prisoner who had some splash into his ear. It started a fire inside his skull. My god, I’ve never heard such screams. Took him an hour to die.”
“I was in prison when an official sentenced for corruption arrived,” Shan replied. “He had been living in a penthouse in Macau, paid for by bribes. He mocked the other prisoners for eating insects and worms, even told the guards to stop the filthy practice. But three months later he was on his hands and knees, fighting over grubs with the others.”
Lau gave a soft laugh. “What an amazing creature you are, Shan. So fearless. So perverse. You could have been my strong right arm,” Lau suggested. He shrugged. “But you made other choices.” He glanced at his watch. “You’ve said your good-byes? We’ll take him now.”
Shan glanced at the window of the station, where Jinhua now nervously watched. The plan had been his suggestion. “Your man awaits you in the truck,” Shan stated, pointing to the cargo bay.
Yintai gestured to one of the guards, who leapt up onto the bumper and pulled back the canvas that covered it. The man glanced inside, then glared at Shan, who gestured for him to look more closely. He stepped inside and pulled back the blanket that lay on the floor, then instantly recoiled, stumbling against the bench that lined the bay and collapsing onto it.
“If he’s unconscious, drag him out,” Yintai snarled. The soldier stared at the floor, seeming not to hear. Yintai muttered an expletive and leapt inside. He too froze, then backed away from what was under the blanket. Lau spat a curse then climbed in himself. The cigarette dropped from his fingers as he saw the mummified remains.
“His name is Sergeant Ma Chu,” Shan declared. Lau seemed not to hear. “As near as I can tell he died in 1966. I would guess September.”
Lau’s face was still pale but his voice was full of fire when he finally turned to Shan. “You insolent fool! I will crush you! I don’t need your son, I will take you! To hell with your colonel! I will put you in such a—”
“1966,” inserted a new voice, thin but firm. “You must remember it, general,” Colonel Tan stated as he stepped out of the alley to Shan’s side. “September was when the Snow Tigers suffered their biggest combat loss ever. In Kham, two hundred miles north of here. You reported Sergeant Ma among the dead in that incident. Imagine our surprise when we found him here in the Ghost Mountains. Buried with a saint.”
Lau leapt out of the truck and advanced, his hand on his pearl-handled pistol. Bystanders were gathering, watching from across the street.
Shan returned his stare without expression. “Never leave a man behind,” he stated. “Part of the Snow Tiger creed.”
Yintai and his companions appeared at Lau’s side, their fists clenched, waiting for the word from Lau. “General,” Yintai murmured, as if to encourage Lau.
Tan shrugged. “1966,” he repeated. “A chaotic year. Who could expect accurate records to have been kept? The recovery of an old hero is cause for solemn celebration. If you like, I can take him back to Lhadrung myself for the ceremony. Full military honors. An article in the Lhasa paper. An honor guard for the funeral, after the forensic exam is done.”
Lau stiffened. “Like the constable said. We leave no man behind.”
“General!” Yintai urged.
“Stand down, captain. We will take the noble sergeant with us.”
Tan murmured a command and one of his own aides appeared, dangling a set of keys before tossing them to Yintai. A minute later Sergeant Ma was being driven away, rejoined after five decades with his comrades-in-arms.
Tan stared silently until the truck and Lau’s car disappeared, then stepped across the street and lowered himself onto a park bench.
Shan followed and sat beside him. “He deserves better,” Shan said. He glanced toward the ridge that rose behind the town, in the direction of his house. He had insisted that Ko stay there, far from Lau’s grasp.
“He?” Tan asked.
“Sergeant Ma. They’ll probably discard him in some ravine.”
“Your sense of justice is truly pathological, Shan,” Tan said as he lit another cigarette. “Lau will stay away now. We’re not worth the trouble. That’s all I want. He can go commit his perversions elsewhere. Just not in Lhadrung.”
“There’s probably records somewhere, of Ma’s family.”
“By god, Shan, it’s over. Let him go.” Tan nursed his cigarette a moment. “You said part of the mummy fell off when you carried him to the truck.”
“One of his feet must have dropped off in the cave. We didn’t realize it until we reached town.”
“So bury his foot. Make a monument. Tomb of the orphaned foot. Grave of the hero appendage.” Tan stared at his cigarette, then flicked it onto the street. “I’m hungry,” he declared.
Shan looked again up at the hills where he had left Ko. He had longed to pass his parole in long quiet discussions. He gestured toward Marpa’s café. “Noodles or dumplings?” he asked.
“Three of us. I want that knob you mentioned to join us.”
Jinhua reluctantly accepted the invitation, relying on Shan’s less than confident assurances that Tan only wanted to hear his evidence, and the three of them soon sat in the front room of the café, alone, at the window table. Marpa had offered to clear out the room but had not needed to, for with one glance at Tan, every other customer had disappeared.
“You’re not convinced Lau’s gone for good,” the colonel declared to Shan as Marpa set a tray of food on the table.
“We simply raised the stakes this morning,” Shan replied. “I don’t think Lau has ever surrendered in his life.”
“Meaning he has unfinished business here.”
“The business he began in 1966,” Shan said and gestured to Jinhua.
The young Public Security officer, once he overcame the intimidation of sitting with the notorious bulldog of Lhadrung, spoke in hushed tones of what he had found out about Lau and his men, from the connections between his tour in central Tibet and sudden wealth in Hong Kong to the deaths of the young secretary and his own partner in Beijing, including the bribes that covered up Lau’s crimes.
“You call them bribes,” Tan said as he helped himself to another dumpling. “Lau would call them mere expediting payments, for the more efficient administration of justice. He would never be convicted. Why waste all that time on investigations and court proceedings?”
“He killed people,” Jinhua asserted.
“People who touched his sphere of influence died. Not the same thing. Lau is royalty. The imperial court always had deaths in the shadows that surrounded it.”
“And now those shadows fall on Lhadrung,” Shan observed.
“I’d say you cast a pretty harsh spotlight into those shadows this morning.” Tan suspended his dumpling in his chopsticks. “I like these. Do I detect a hint of curry?”
“What if he killed twenty-four of his own soldiers in your county?”
“Ridiculous. He’s a greedy son of a bitch, but no traitor. He is as devoted to the army as I am.” Tan turned to Jinhua. “Lieutenant, I consider your business here complete.”
Jinhua glanced uneasily at Shan before replying. “But I’ve accomplished nothing.”
“Nonsense. You helped frighten Lau. You convinced Constable Shan of your earnestness, no small accomplishment in itself. You’ve even managed to stay alive.”
“So Lau’s payment for all the murders is a momentary fright,” Jinhua shot back.
Shan’s gut tightened. Jinhua had never experienced one of Tan’s eruptions.
“This is Tibet, comrade,” Tan said in a chill voice that set Shan’s nerves on end. “Tibetans believe that eventually all sins are paid for. Lau is old. He will die soon enough and come back as a cockroach. You can stomp on him then.”
“It wasn’t Lau who killed two soldiers last month,” Shan said.
“Like you said, Shan, a military matter.”
“I’m pleased you acknowledge it. So someone with access to military channels should have no trouble with the obvious tasks.”
Tan frowned. He folded his chopsticks over his plate and drained his tea. “Good-bye, lieutenant. Enjoy the scenery on your long drive home.”
Jinhua stood, then hesitated, as if wondering whether to offer a hand. He brushed a finger along his temple in what might have been a feeble salute, then left.
Tan waited until he saw Jinhua on the street before speaking. “Tasks?” he asked Shan.
“What was the mission of those two soldiers? They weren’t in the Ghost Mountains by coincidence.”
“And?”
“An assignment for someone who knows the old record systems. Bosses come and go, but bureaucrats live forever. I once saw records for construction of the storm water system for Kaifeng in the Sung Dynasty.” Shan poured Tan more tea. He might dismiss outsiders and profess interest only in keeping trouble away from Lhadrung, but in his heart the colonel was a warrior, and he had not had a good fight for years.
“But you’re concerned with the Mao Dynasty,” Tan suggested.
Shan nodded. “Also the service record of Sergeant Ma. Whether Lau requisitioned heavy trucks when he was operating here, and where did they go. Whether his unit actually did move north into Kham in fall of 1966.”
Tan stared out into the square. The remains of the tree that had fallen had been cut and piled, awaiting a bonfire. “You don’t think Lau is giving up. What could possibly interest him about this place?”
“He suspects there is more treasure still hidden in these hills.”
“What’s more treasure mean to him? He’s as rich as an emperor.”
“He is a man who must have more. There’s always one more thing to buy. A bigger yacht. An island. A city. A country. But what really festers isn’t so much the missing treasure, it’s that Tibetans successfully concealed it, cheated him. His business here was never finished. It’s why he left agents here.”
“For fifty years?”
“There was an army outpost here in Yangkar until ten years ago. Only since then. One of them killed my predecessor.”
Tan frowned. “That was a road accident.”
“When a law enforcement official dies in Tibet, Public Security has two sets of forms. Death by heart attack or death by road accident. Pick an option and complete the name.”
Tan watched a tumbleweed blow across the ragged square. An old woman led a donkey past them, baskets of dried dung on its back. He shook his head. “It’s like the land itself resists,” he said. “Stomp them all down and they just grow back again like some stubby weed. You begin to wonder who is stomping whom.”
Shan gazed at the old officer. It was somehow disturbing to hear Tan equivocate about anything.
“When I was assigned to Lhadrung,” the colonel continued, “it was supposed to be just for a few years. My destiny was as a battle leader, in a war with India or Taiwan. That’s how I viewed myself, a battle commander in a temporary assignment. Thirty years on temporary assignment,” the colonel added with a hoarse laugh.
Shan studied Tan. He seemed to have aged since Lau appeared in his county.
“Orders came from Beijing,” Tan continued. “We are to assign troops to community rehabilitation. Show the friendly face of the Chinese soldier. This place is a disgrace. How many should I send for cleanup? The projects can be assigned by the local civil authority.”
Shan returned his pointed stare. He was offering to post his men at Shan’s disposal. Shan shook his head. “The local authority has to conduct this particular cleanup.”
He stayed at the table as Tan’s weathered limousine appeared from an alley and the colonel climbed inside. “Day after tomorrow,” Tan reminded Shan in parting. “I’ll tell them your son is expected at sunset tomorrow instead of noon. A few more hours. Try to keep him from assaulting anyone else.”
Marpa, a towel in his hand, appeared at Shan’s side and watched as the Red Flag drove out of the square. As he turned, Shan saw movement in the pocket of his apron.
“Just our friend,” Marpa explained. He inserted his hand and briefly lifted a brown furry mass in his cupped hand. “Shiva’s in the mountains and asked me to watch him.”
Shan reached out and stroked the gerbil’s head. “I’d like to take a meal home tonight,” he said. “For half a dozen. Something special.”
Marpa nodded as he set the gerbil back in his pocket. “I found a book on the great Tibetan poets. Maybe you want to show your son. A good boy.” The townspeople had been unusually friendly to Ko, except for the members of the Committee of Leading Citizens, who cast suspicious glances at his son. Shan had seen Mrs. Weng watching from a doorway, her face pinched in a frown as she wrote in a notebook.
Marpa brought the volume of poetry from the kitchen, then hesitated. He glanced nervously at Shan and looked away. “I didn’t want to say anything,” the café owner began, “but Lodi’s my nephew. Neither of us have anyone else.”
“Lodi? What’s wrong?” Shan was still troubled by the boy’s strange actions with Yintai.
“Nothing wrong. It’s just that he spends so much time in that tower these days.”
“The tower?”
“Sometimes hours every day. It’s better not to fill his head with wild ideas.”
Now Shan was worried about Marpa himself. “Marpa, I have no notion of what you speak about.”
“He’s been keeping a vigil, as it were. He’s watching for his parents, Shan.”
“I never told him—”
Marpa raised a hand. “He tells me most every day recently. Constable Shan can bring people back. Constable Shan brought Tserung’s dead son back to life.”
“I swear, Marpa, I never—”
“I can’t bring myself to tell the boy. They’re never coming back. He hadn’t mentioned them for years. But then that Gyatso in the garage started talking about his lost brother being found, and he began spending hours up on that tower, watching for them. Childhood is short enough in Tibet. He should be living it, not groping among the ruins of our past. That fool Gyatso told him he had to do something to be noticed by the gods, something bold and defiant, to make it clear to them the boy was still a good Tibetan.”
Shan shut his eyes a moment. Yangkar, not Buzhou, Lodi had shouted at Yantai. “That stunt on the street. He’s lucky he wasn’t pistol-whipped by the captain.”
“I should have kept him in his room.”
“I’m sorry,” Shan said to his friend. He could find no other words. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, then gestured to Marpa’s apron pocket. “I’ve been meaning to ask why Shiva thinks her uncle would be reincarnated here, in Yangkar.”
Marpa, half listening, was stacking dishes on a tray. “Here?”
“She only came here a few years ago, she said. I mean why not in the town she came from, her family’s town?”
“But he was from here. Her Uncle Kapo ran the forge for the old gompa, I hear.”
“But she was not from—”
Marpa put down his tray. “She’d be scared to tell a policeman the truth. She was one of the few who dared to return. No one speaks about them.”
“Them?”
“Buddha’s breath, Shan. The original ones. Haven’t you ever wondered about why there are so few old ones here? Only four over sixty-five in the entire town. They told us it was because it was to be a new pioneer town back in 1973. No one over twenty allowed back. Meaning no one who had been more than fifteen before we were sent away. Only a handful of the older ones dared to come back. The astrologer, Trinle and his wife, and Nyima.”
“The Americans’ mother was Nyima’s niece. And Lhamo is a cousin.”
A surprisingly loud chattering noise rose from Marpa’s pocket. “He’s hungry,” Marpa announced. “Shiva even gave me a little horoscope, a chart, to show how her uncle’s diet should change on certain days. I taped it inside one of my cabinet doors.”
“I want to see it.”
Shan followed Marpa into the kitchen, where he opened several doors before finding the chart. “Okay, a little bit of apricot on the third day, some fresh barley on the fourth.” Marpa turned to Shan. “What did you want to see?”
“His name. I think she would have used his full reincarnate name.”
Marpa ran a finger down the chart and stopped near the bottom. “Taklha,” he announced, cocking his head a moment in confusion before looking at Shan. “Kapo Taklha.”
All the old ones who had returned were from the Taklha clan. Were they there as the keepers of the faith in Yangkar? Shan wondered. Or had they returned to exact secret revenge?