“Jengtse! Where is Jengtse?” he demanded of Jinhua when he returned to the station. Jinhua, a bandage on his head, had settled into the station for his rehabilitation, sleeping in a cell.
“I don’t know,” the young officer said. “There was a phone call. Half an hour later he said he was going out to walk a patrol. But I watched him. He got into a truck that waited for him on the far side of the square.”
“Can you walk?” Shan asked.
“Of course.” Jinhua seemed to sense danger in Shan’s eyes. “And I can still hold a pistol.”
Shan gazed in frustration into the shadows outside. There was no point in going into the mountains at night. They could have taken the American to any number of places, and once she told them where to search they would have to collect equipment.
“Get some sleep,” he said. “Be ready at dawn. Wear your uniform. Bring your gun and manacles.”
A grim smile rose on Jinhua’s face. “Sounds like one of those old movies. When the lawman finally comes for justice. Except there’s usually soldiers and natives tangled in the mess, and in the end you’re never entirely sure who to root for.”
“This is Tibet. We bypass the melodrama and go straight to the reckoning.”
“So more like a karmic event,” Jinhua said and saw Shan’s surprise. He shrugged. “I’ve been spending time with Marpa in the noodle shop. He talks about immortal souls the way other people talk about the weather. It’s when destinies collide and souls get reconciled.”
It wasn’t Jinhua’s words that filled Shan with foreboding as he walked across the square, it was the resigned, almost melancholy way he spoke them. There had been a reckless glint in his eyes. Jinhua had recognized long ago that his vow to revenge his partner jeopardized his life, but Shan had seen the fear that kept him cautious. Now that fear was gone.
A crescent moon slipped out of high clouds as he reached the top of the old tower. He whispered Lodi’s name and was answered by a quick bark as Raj sprang from the shadows.
“How long have you been up here?” Shan asked as the boy reached his dog’s side.
“Since midafternoon, constable. My uncle gave me a new book, and I can read up here without the wind grabbing the pages. I wasn’t watching all the time,” he said with apology in his voice.
“Did you spot a helicopter nearby?”
Lodi nodded. “One landed a few miles to the south. I think they met one of those little army trucks. Because not long after there was a cloud of dust and the truck drove into town and stopped in an alley off the square.”
“Who got in?”
“Deputy Jengtse. Sometimes the army has trouble on the road. You know, they need someone to direct traffic so a convoy can pass. Or tend to stray animals on the highway. They drove back out to the highway and turned to the south, toward the helicopter. Later, at sunset, that helicopter lifted off, going farther south.” Lodi pointed toward Lhadrung, where Lau’s men had taken over a guesthouse.
“Lodi,” he said to the boy, “I think Shiva may need help. Get your uncle. I’ll meet you at her house.”
He descended the tower with the boy then watched him run, Raj at his heels, toward the café before turning to the phone in the square.
“The colonel left here and has no phone,” Amah Jiejie reported. “I can put you through to one of his aides who might be with him.”
Shan waited, then heard orders being given by what sounded like a drill instructor before Tan took the phone. Shan quickly explained what had happened to the American.
“If they brought her here I can have the house surrounded in minutes,” Tan offered.
“No. This has to reach an ending. Lau is probably in Lhasa, waiting to collect what he has been waiting for all these years. Just make a presence, keep them off guard. Yintai won’t hurt her if he knows you are watching.”
Tan’s voice became muffled as he spoke to someone else. “Our officers’ association is going to take an impromptu dinner to the representatives of the famed Snow Tigers,” the colonel announced. “Beer and cards afterward, far into the night. My men will be insistent.”
“They will want to leave early in the morning,” Shan said. “Just let them go.”
“I will send men up to you tonight.”
“No. No one.”
“He’ll kill you.”
Suddenly a chamber seemed to open in Shan’s mind, and he was with Lokesh, standing by the salt saints at the ancient shrine. “The gods will decide that,” Shan replied.
“I’m sorry?”
“Nothing. The only chance we have is if Lau thinks he has already won.”
“Dammit, Shan,” Tan said, then went silent for so long Shan was about to hang up. “If you get killed it will mean the fourth constable in as many years. It’s going to make me look negligent.”
* * *
Shiva’s house was never particularly orderly, but now the astrologer’s home looked like a storm had blown through. Furniture was upended. Her precious bottles of ink had been smashed against the walls. The little easel where she worked was in splinters.
In the center of the chaos the old woman sat in a chair, holding a bloody rag to her mouth with one hand as Marpa bandaged the other.
Shan righted a stool and sat before her. “Grandmother, I am sorry.”
Shiva’s effort at a smile turned into a grimace. “The signs were all of evil. Something bad was going to happen.” The astrologer fingered a loose tooth, then looked down at the bloody rag in her hand. “I don’t know what I will tell the poor American girl. Jig trusted me. The family relied on me to keep Pema safe.” She dabbed at her eyes.
“It’s not your fault.” Shan surveyed the room. “Tell me what happened. Who did this?”
“Someone opened the door and called my name, a Tibetan. As I rose from my easel these two Chinese men came rushing down the hall. One had a huge scar across his throat. He demanded to know where the mother’s box of ashes was. That’s what he said, the mother’s box of ashes. I told him someone should finish cutting his throat and said I would be glad to do his death chart. He hit me. I told him he was going to the avichi hell, where those who harm the faith are endlessly tortured. He hit me again. Then they tore everything apart. They wouldn’t have found it except that I glanced over to make sure Kapo was alright.”
With a shudder Shan saw that the old aquarium that housed her gerbil was shattered. “You hid the box in the sand?”
Shiva smiled through her bloody, swollen lips. “Uncle Kapo bit him when he reached in, bit him real good. That’s when he pulled his gun. He shot the glass. He was furious.”
Shan dreaded to ask the question, then to his relief he saw two black eyes watching him from a pocket of Shiva’s apron. “My uncle’s too fast for some fool soldier,” she boasted and made little jumping motions with her hand.
“How did they know, Shiva?” Shan asked. “How did they know the box was here?”
The old woman shook her head and held the bloody rag to her lips. “The chart,” she murmured.
Shan gently pulled away her hand. “What about the chart?”
“Someone stole it, a few days ago.”
He straightened, then whispered to Lodi, asking him to bring the big envelope in the top drawer of his desk. The boy was back, breathless, in the time it took Shan and Marpa to straighten the chamber.
“Yintai, the general’s aide, had your chart,” Shan explained as he opened the envelope and extracted the chart. “But why would it matter, Shiva?”
“Because I am a fool. Because I wanted it for Jig to take to her American family.”
For the first time Shan read the fine lines of script that had been completed along the bottom, inscribed so elegantly it looked like a passage of scripture. It began with the traditional death poem that Shan expected, but ended with Shiva’s own words. Cherished brother and cousin, it simply said, we of the Taklha clan embrace you. The chart hadn’t simply told Yintai and his local conspirators that the dead American had been in the Taklha clan, it had also told them that Shiva was of the same clan.
“I am the only one of the clan with a house,” the astrologer explained, “the safest place for Pema, we thought.” She looked up with pleading eyes. “What those men do to our Pema!” she blurted, her voice cracking. “It will be like she died twice!”