The grey-haired lama spoke in an almost conversational tone to Xie, reciting the ancient words of Bardo that explained what to expect in the difficult period between death and rebirth. The lama leaned forward from time to time as if to emphasize his words to the paper mask of Xie’s face that sat on the low altar before him. The mask effigy was not uncommon in traditional funerals, for bodies were often removed to the fleshcutters before such ceremonies could be arranged.
“Are they going to bury it afterwards?” Tuan whispered, nodding toward the inked image of the dead man.
“They will burn it,” Shan explained, glancing at his companion, wondering if it was the Religious Affairs officer asking or the orphaned Tibetan. “Traditionally, there would be a seer who would pronounce the particular heaven or hell the dead one was bound for, based on the color of its smoke.”
Tuan leaned toward Shan’s ear. “I thought we knew that already. The hell where you sit and listen to Madam Choi read files all day.”
On the low table before the seated lama, the drawing of Xie was surrounded by the Offerings of the Five Senses, representing the physical world he had departed. A mirror stood for sight, a conch for sound, a vase of flowers for smell, a small barley cake for taste, and a strip of silk for touch. Below the table were more bowls of food and drink to fortify Xie for his journey.
They were in what had been the entry chamber for the huge dukhang, the assembly hall that had once served the monks of Shetok gompa. Although that larger hall was reduced to rubble decades earlier, the tall airy room they gathered in had been restored to serve as the hall for the much-reduced gompa. Half a dozen large thangkas of old gods adorned the walls. Sweet juniper smoldered in a large brazier just outside the wide entry, whose double doors hung open to the courtyard where latecomers stood. Cones of incense burned on the altar above the effigy of Xie.
Benches had been brought in for the Commissioners. The other attendees sat on the stone flags of the floor or stood, like Shan, at the rear of the chamber. Sung, having promised no uniformed police, assigned four knobs in plainclothes to drive the Commissioners and staff and had stationed them like guards around the perimeter of the funeral assembly. A video camera on a tripod by the entry recorded all who entered. The major’s eyes burned with a predator’s hunger, darting back and forth, scrutinizing each woman who arrived, pausing over the tall, slender younger ones. The knobs ordered several women to pull their hair away from their face. Shan recalled the grainy photograph that been on Sung’s desk, beside the old passport photo of a cheerful young student. The young student had transformed into the robed wraith of Sung’s second photo. Lotus blossom tattooed on left temple someone had written on that photo.
He had the sense of being watched, and scanned the crowd. Near the door a teenaged girl stood, staring at him. It took a moment for him to recognize her with her intricately braided and beaded hair and clean, brightly colored traditional clothing, but he saw now it was the girl who been with the cart of snow at the Yamdrok clinic. He smiled and she gave a bow of her head in solemn greeting, then looked back to the altar.
Shetok gompa was the kind of place Lokesh and Shan liked to visit, a holy site where Lokesh would linger for hours, talking with the lamas about the symbols used in the old thangkas and murals or the artifacts flanking the bronze Buddha on the main altar. Shan studied the artifacts as the lama continued to address Xie. A silver-plated skull bowl. Two silver trumpets with gold adornments. A spectacular dancing dakini goddess in silver, with a gold face. In one thangka over the altar, a very old, ferocious blue tiger god hovered over the Buddha as if to protect him. From another, a horse-headed demon seemed to watch the crowd. Shan looked back at the ragged lamas and monks of the little impoverished gompa. It seemed unlikely that Shetok gompa had permission to possess such priceless artifacts. Shan looked again at the line of figures.
“When I misbehaved,” came a voice at his shoulder, “my mother used to say a blue tiger would fly out of the sky and bite my head off if I didn’t ask forgiveness.” Tuan too was looking at the altar. “Those figures are all supposed to have serial numbers so they can be tracked in our database. If even one is unregistered, we could put the abbot in prison.”
Tuan gestured to one of the thangkas over the altar. “Lord of Death,” he muttered. “Should be the real patron of the purbas.”
“Actually, no. It is Tamdin, the protector demon,” Shan corrected. He saw the slight flush in his companion’s face. “Tamdin,” he repeated, then pointed to the other thangkas. “To the left is Songtsän Gampo, Trisong Detsen, and Repachen. Those three thangkas are very old. All Tibetan emperors from distant centuries.”
For a moment, Tuan seemed the eager novice. He repeated the names, then gestured to the images on the right. “All demon protectors,” Shan explained. “Chenresik, Manjugosha, Chagna Dorje. The protectors of speech, mind, and body.”
Heads began turning toward the entry. Above the voice of the lama came a rumbling chant from outside accompanied by a hollow rattling and soft ringing. Shan edged toward the doors, Tuan a step behind.
A huge man in ragged, disheveled clothes danced in the courtyard with his arms raised beseechingly toward the sky. His long hair, hanging in tangles around his shoulders, had bits of fur and feathers tied into it. In one outstretched hand, he suspended a small pair of tsinghas, ceremonial cymbals. In the other was a damara, a hand drum made out of a human skull that sounded with each turn of his wrist.
The older Tibetans around them gazed at the man with worry, even fear on their faces.
“Better and better!” Tuan laughed. “Entertainment!” An old Tibetan man beside him cast a scolding glance at Tuan. “A weather witch, Shan! Bane of Public Security helicopters.”
The aged lamas in Shan’s prison had often talked about the weather-makers, also called hail-chasers, who once roamed the Tibetan countryside, taking money from farmers to bring rain or repel hail. They were distant memories in most parts of Tibet, but here, Shan reminded himself, they were in a pocket of deep tradition, where Beijing’s relentless campaigns to banish the old ways had never taken root.
Some of the younger monks slipped outside to watch the sorcerer. One gestured toward a line of gathering clouds on the horizon. Sung raised a hand to his mouth, speaking into a hidden microphone, and the men in suits converged on the door.
“What is this?” the major snapped as he reached their side.
“One of the old weather sorcerers, Major.” Tuan spoke with drama in his voice. “He makes storms. You know, the kind that bring down avalanches and slam helicopters into mountains.”
Sung’s lips twisted in a silent snarl. As the storm raiser’s dance took him toward the rear of the courtyard, toward the parked cars, the major ordered his men to follow. More Tibetans rose up to watch. Sung and Tuan pushed through to the courtyard, but Shan lingered, looking back. Only the last four rows of attendees had risen and crowded at the entry. Only the last four, as if their movements had been choreographed.
Outside, the conjurer turned his dance into a half run. With remarkable agility he leapt onto the engine hood of one of the utility vehicles from Zhongje, then onto its roof. He danced for a moment, then in a white cloud vaulted to the roof of the adjoining vehicle, dancing again and then leaping again in another cloud until he had jumped on all four of their vehicles. From each perch he was throwing barley flour into the air, as Tibetans often did on special holidays. But he had aimed the flour so that it coated the windshield of each vehicle. Sung cursed and pushed toward the man, who adroitly pulled himself from the last car onto the top of the old wall that surrounded the compound, where he continued his strange ritual.
Suddenly Shan realized the video camera was gone, and a new voice rose from the altar. A slender robed woman knelt before the effigy and was speaking to it in a melodious tone. Madam Choi, sitting at the front, seemed to have lost her color and her strength. She put a hand on Miss Zhu’s shoulder as though needing help to stand, then a dozen monks behind her stood and started repeating mantras in loud voices. They moved between the altar and the Commissioners. Shan saw Choi trying to shout an alarm, but the monks drowned her out.
Shan worked his way through the crowd for a better view of the altar. The woman in the dark brown robe might have been a nun except that at her waist she wore a red embroidered belt and around her neck was a sash in three colors. Not a sash. She was wearing the flag of Free Tibet. With a graceful motion, she reached into a sleeve and laid an old pocket watch beside the effigy, then leaned a photo beside the inked face, an image of a small girl in the arms of a much younger Xie. Dawa, the most sought-after fugitive in Tibet, had come to pay homage to her father. She had taken Sung’s bait.
Shan darted to the door, seeing that Sung had sent two of his men to climb the wall in pursuit of the weather-maker, who had worked his way to the wall over the gate. As Shan watched, he entered a little stone structure that may once have been a guard tower. Suddenly another of Sung’s men appeared on the far wall, running toward the tower. The hail-chaser was about to be trapped.
“It’s her!”
Sung spun about to see Madam Choi hammering monks with her fists as she struggled to get out of the crowd. “Dawa is here!” she frantically sputtered.
With quick, furious commands, Sung called back his men from the walls. As they leapt down, telescoping metal batons appeared in their hands.
Shan darted toward the altar. Nearly every attendee was now standing, many of them milling about, looking confused, though Shan now knew most were deliberately seeking to hinder the passage of the knobs. “Run!” he shouted in Tibetan. “She must flee!”
One of the knobs slashed through the crowd in front of Sung and Choi, striking savagely about with his baton to clear a path. Shan rammed the knob with his shoulder, pushing him off balance. The man roared with anger and pounded his baton into Shan’s back, dropping him to his knees.
“Where?” Sung shouted.
As he regained his feet, Shan saw Sung’s hand reach under his tunic to the small of his back, where he had no doubt concealed a pistol. Then the major hesitated, and his hand came away empty. Dawa was gone. The old lama was at the altar once more, reciting the Bardo. The only evidence Dawa had ever been there was the watch and the photo by the effigy.
“Where?” Sung repeated, grabbing Choi by the shoulder and shaking her. When the confused Choi offered no reply, he ran forward and seized the old lama. “Where?” Sung shrieked again. When the old man did not respond, Sung grabbed the old watch and slammed it against the stone wall. He threw the lama to the floor. “Where is the bitch?”
The lama looked not at Sung but toward the Buddha on the main altar.
Sung kicked the man, who groaned and held his belly but still said nothing. A second lama knelt and continued the recitation exactly where the first had left off. Sung kicked the second lama.
The first lama was on his knees now. He defiantly grabbed the inked effigy and held it over a butter lamp. As the paper began to curl and burn, he rose and laid it on the lap of the bronze Buddha. The lama was ending the service early rather than have Public Security forcibly shut it down.
The fury on Sung’s face was a black storm. The major was coiling as if to pounce on the lama.
“On horses!” came a call from outside. One of Sung’s men was waving from the wall now. “The sorcerer and the woman are galloping up the slope!”
Sung spun about and crashed through the crowd with an explosion of orders. The engines of the two nearest vehicles roared to life, but the cars did not move. The windshields were still covered with flour, and as the windshield washers switched on, the flour quickly turned to paste. Sung leapt into the first car screaming at his men to clean the glass. At the farthest of their vehicles, Hannah Oglesby was carefully wiping away the flour while it was still dry. She gestured Shan to the car as Judson slipped behind the wheel and started the engine. Shan climbed in, then followed Judson’s frowning gaze to see Tuan and Chairman Choi close behind.
Judson ignored the frenzied urging of Choi and waited until Sung’s vehicles finally roared out of the compound before putting their car into gear.
On the grassy slope above, half a mile away, two figures on horseback could be made out, headed toward the high pass that led into the labyrinth of Taktsang, the Tiger’s Lair. The vehicles were much faster than the sturdy mountain horses, but they had to follow long tedious switchbacks up the broad, steep slope. Although a Public Security helicopter might easily have intercepted the fugitives, Shan doubted Sung had arranged for one—not because so many had been lost in these mountains, but because Sung would have wanted all the credit for apprehending the infamous dissident. That was how he would regain Pao’s favor. It would be a close thing. If the fugitives could reach the pass before the knob vehicles, they would likely be able to lose themselves in the ragged landscape beyond.
At first Judson stayed close to the knobs, but the cloud of dust they raised obscured the narrow road, so the American eased off the accelerator. As the knobs slowed to round another curve, then sped up from the next leg, Shan realized with a sinking heart that Sung was going to win the race. He would reach the top with the purbas still in pistol range. The major would capture Dawa, piercing the heart of the dissident movement and saving his own career.
He watched as the riders reached the crest of the ridge and paused, looking back at their pursuers, oddly waiting for several long moments before prodding their mounts on. Moments later, the two black utility vehicles crested the ridge at high speed. When Shan and his companions reached the crest, the knobs were a quarter mile below them, climbing out of their cars.
They were in a narrow canyon, the lower slopes of which were covered with high grass and rock outcroppings. It was, Shan realized, the path into Taktsang. Along the steep rock walls on either side were painted mantras and warnings—some so old as to be unreadable, others very fresh. Several of the outcroppings were painted red, with more writing. These were homes of minor protector deities. The walls themselves, rising for several hundred feet, were splintered with crevasses and caves. Shan hoped the fugitives were losing themselves in that labyrinth, but as Judson coasted to a stop by the knobs, his heart sank. They had dismounted and left their horses only two hundred feet ahead of the knobs.
Sung and his men were scanning the slopes with binoculars. The major’s hand was at his back, inside his jacket, but Shan saw he was hestitant about drawing his pistol. He snapped a command, and one of his men produced a megaphone from the back of one of their vehicles. “We are prepared to be lenient if you surrender now!” he shouted through the device.
A slender figure in a brown robe suddenly stood up on a flat outcropping only fifty yards away. Sung was gesturing his men to close on the figure when a second figure rose on an outcropping on the opposite side of the road. As they watched in confusion four more robed figures emerged from four more outcroppings, forming two rows flanking the road. Beside each figure stood a large pile of brush.
Sung looked back uneasily at the Americans then called for one of his men to herd them back into their car. His angry words died away as another knob pointed up the slope. Beside still another outcropping, stood a tripod and camera. The major hesitated, confused. It was, Shan realized, the camera from the funeral hall. As the knobs turned back toward the outcroppings along the road, two more figures appeared by the tripod. They were the ones who had fled on horses, and as Shan watched the woman lowered her hood. She had long black hair worn in two braids. It was not Dawa. Dawa was still at her father’s funeral, now with no knobs to hound her.
Sung’s pistol was in his hand now. He grabbed a pair of binoculars with his other hand and was raising them to his eyes when Madam Choi screamed. Brush had been removed from the nearest outcropping and the figure on it had burst into flames. To their horror, more immolations came. Each of the brush piles on the outcroppings had been swept aside and in quick succession flames shot up to consume each of the six figures. Judson began shooting photos with his phone then Sung leapt at him, knocking it from his hand.
“The camera!” one of the knobs shouted. The camera was now being operated by one of the Tibetans, aimed at the knobs and the fires.
Shan desperately ran toward the nearest blaze, Tuan and Judson at his heels, then slowed and stopped thirty feet away. The burning figures in the brush piles were giving off thick black smoke now, and a terrible acrid smell.
“Ta me da!” Tuan cursed.
Sung began shouting in a high, desperate pitch, ordering his men to get the Commissioners off the mountain. Madam Choi began screaming again, but now her screams were of anger.
Judson began to laugh.
A knob fired a pistol into the air. Sung did not move.
Shan had seen many Public Security officers explode in fury, had often seen them lash out with hatred and violence. In all his years, he had never seen one with the look of shocked, eviscerating defeat that Sung now wore as he grasped the scene that was being filmed, with the major as its centerpiece.
Arrayed before them, in two neat lines along the road, six fiberglass statues of Chairman Mao were being immolated.