Suddenly a dozen faces were fixed on the two intruders. Some of the nuns cried out in alarm, others in anger. The short man who had led the khampas shot up with a furious expression and rushed at Shan and Lokesh with a raised fist.
“Sergeant Gingri! No.” Dawa stepped from the shadows by the wall as she spoke. “We are all friends,” she declared, and gestured them forward.
Shan did not move, but Lokesh hurried to the circle. Two nuns made a place between them for him. “We do not mean to interfere with—,” Shan began, then ended with a confused gesture toward the circle. It was impossible that the American woman was there, in this most secret of temples, among the most secret of the purba dissidents.
“A purification,” Hannah explained. Although her eyes smiled at him, her voice was tight and worried. “I am ever the student.”
“Student of what exactly, Miss Oglesby?” Shan asked.
“Student in the art of living well,” came a familiar voice. Judson emerged from the darkness and put a hand on Shan’s shoulder, though whether it was a gesture of friendship or of warning Shan was not certain.
“I thought you two would have gone to Lhasa. How could you have known about…?” Shan’s voice trailed off in more confusion.
“You know Americans. Insatiable tourists. With a three-day holiday, we thought we should take in the less traveled sights. Our dawn hikes at Zhongje don’t stretch our legs enough.” The American brightened as he noticed Lokesh. “Is this him?” He stepped forward and offered a handshake, which Lokesh awkwardly accepted. “From a solitary cell to paradise.” He jerked his thumb toward Shan. “Your friend prays to the right gods.”
For a moment Shan bristled, but the lanky American was so good-natured, it was difficult to be offended. Judson exchanged a long inquiring gaze with Hannah as Sergeant Gingri loudly berated the now awakened guard in the hall.
Dawa approached and grasped Shan’s arm. “The stars are amazing here,” the dissident leader said to Shan, and gently pulled him out of the room.
“You knew the Americans before,” Shan said as they settled onto a log bench that overlooked the old bridge.
“I apologize for Sergeant Gingri. He is responsible for security and takes his job very seriously. He thinks I should stay away from you, that he should get you back to Zhongje this very night. But I told him Tserung and Dolma trust you.”
“Your aunt and uncle.”
“It is a dangerous thing even to speak of family. Since I began … I began my new life, I have been careful to use only my first name. They had a dozen suspects in mind, but weren’t sure who the purba leader was until recently.”
“After reading some of the poems,” Shan revealed in a tight voice, “I told them if the immolations were being coordinated, it would likely be by someone who once wore the robe of a nun or monk. I wasn’t thinking. I believe they had already decided the leader was a woman.”
“You understand us well, Shan, and I am not the only nun or former nun among us who wore a robe. It was only a matter of time,” Dawa said. “I am not nearly so inclined to hide myself as those around me think I should. But I have always hidden my connections to the Americans. If discovered, it would go badly for them. They would be accused of espionage and fomenting rebellion. I am not sure their government could protect them.”
“People have been killed, Dawa. I have only been trying to understand the deaths. The last immolation was of a Chinese, disguised so Tibetans would be the scapegoats. Secrets are getting people killed.”
She stared into the night sky as she spoke. “I spent a year at a university in Colorado. Hannah was my roommate. We became very close, like the sisters we never had. I taught her Tibetan, she improved my English. Back then, Judson was her boyfriend, but he went away, got married and divorced. She and I stayed in close touch all these years, although I was not able to leave Tibet. We would talk on the phone whenever possible. When she was posted in Tibet for a few months, she had a week’s leave and I was planning to take her to see the tourist places, but in Colorado I had spoken of Taktsang the paradise, where my father first took me as a girl, and she only wanted to come here. We are blessed that the Commission gave us the opportunity to come together one more time.”
One more time. She made it sound as if it were the last time. The purbas had been planning something, planning since before Xie died. “Your father is gone, Dawa. You should leave Tibet.”
The purba leader smiled. “My name and picture are posted at every border crossing. Once, we might have gone over the mountain passes, but now they station snipers at all of them, hidden in bunkers covered with snow. They shoot everyone who tries to cross. In some, they have installed automatic machine guns triggered by anything that moves.”
Meteors streaked overhead. Something large, a yak or antelope, splashed through the stream in the shadows.
“You’ve been a dissident for years. I keep wondering why your father was even allowed to serve on the Commission.”
“They didn’t know of my connection to their ex-convict Commissioner. I was wanted by the police, just as dozens of other active protesters were. My father said they cleared him to serve because he was the kind of political pedigree that the foreigners would sympathize with, that he would have instant credibility with them, and be a pliable symbol of the Party’s tolerance. They never thought that he would dare resist Pao. No one ever does. He said I should come here until the Commission’s work was done, that I should just let him fight the Tibetan battle before the Commission for now. He said to keep the protests quiet if I could.”
“Because he knew the protesters would go to you, wherever you were.”
Her nod seemed forlorn. “Not all. But, yes, some came to understand how to honor themselves.”
“They talk with you and then embrace the flames. You have the last chance to stop them.”
Even in the night, he could see Dawa’s eyes flash. “Never once did I say they should seek the flames!” Then she softened, and held her head in her hands for a long moment. “I must have had this conversation a hundred times with my father. I am no nun now, but people seek me out as a nun. The teachings say suicide is a grave sin, certain to lead to a far lower level of existence in the next life.”
“And how did you react when he said that?”
He could see her bitter grin in the moonlight. “You have it wrong, Shan. I would recite the teachings and he would argue. ‘We are living at the end of time, and the lives of humans at the end of time have to be different,’ he told me, ‘they must be different, for it is on their backs that the next age is built. It is a time of bold action, of transition and new measures.’ He would say he himself was made of two separate worlds, and he could never obey the rules of each of those worlds at once. He said we must be ready to do the unthinkable. ‘Good people grow lazy with their souls lulled asleep,’ he would say. ‘If a few brave souls wish to wake them with fire, who are we to stop it?’ I was the one who argued it was a sin.”
“I have seen photos of the immolations, Dawa, of the bodies afterwards. They haunt my sleep. Since the poems appeared, the immolations have increased. What does that make you? The spark for the fire? The wind that fans the flames?”
Dawa pressed her fist against her breast as if her heart ached. “At first when someone came who was contemplating immolation, I would do all I could to persuade them to stop. But most would not listen to me. They were coming to me not to be dissuaded but to tell me their act was an affirmation of our cause, to make the living stronger.” Her voice broke. “My father said our duty was not to stop them, but to show them the beauty in their final act so their spirits would be calm as they passed over.” A tear rolled down her cheek.
“The poems.”
She wiped her cheek and nodded. “The first two had been students with me, and we were sometimes disciplined by our abbess for writing poems and reading the poetry of Ani Jinpa when we should have been studying.”
“You wrote the poems for the immolations?”
“Never. Only those who had decided to end their lives would do so. But the word spread fast. It became another way of blessing the act. Once you decide to accept the embrace of Agni, you write a poem to show you did not die with hatred in your heart. My father said it was the way all of us should die, in courage and beauty. They come here or sent word for Yosen or Pema to go to them.”
“Bearing blank paper from Shetok.”
“We found a old stock of it, from the printing press they once operated. It had been blessed for use in sacred books a hundred years ago.”
The sound of the running water filled their silence. Above them, a nighthawk called. “That day of the funeral,” Shan suggested. “It wasn’t you on that horse.”
“Of course not. We had to clear out Public Security. I stayed another hour, and we gave my father a proper ceremony. Afterwards, we took his body up to the fleshcutters.”
“I am sorry not to have known him.”
“You have much in common with him. Judson said you were going to speak at his funeral. What would you have said of a man you never met?”
Shan offered a weak smile. He had met Xie and sat in his chair, had lived with him since his first day at the Commission. “All I could think of is something that Judson himself told me. “I am only one, but still I am one.”
Dawa bit her lip and offered a sad but grateful nod.
“Did he not understand the danger he was in by serving on the Commission?”
“He had a weak heart. He lived week to week, day to day. He is the only one I know who would read that old poem from the Panchen Lama about death with joy on his face.”
“‘Empower us to take the essence of life,’” Shan recited.
Dawa completed the verse. “‘Without being distracted by its meaningless affairs.’” She looked up at the stars. “He did not know how long he would live, and he said if he did not go on the Commission, someone else without his understanding of Tibet would serve.”
“He did not know he would give his life for it,” Shan said. “But sometimes hidden crimes find hidden justice,” he added, hoping to comfort her.
“I’m sorry? Justice? For a bad heart?”
She saw the confusion in Shan’s eyes as he turned to her, then seemed to sag. “People treat me like I have to be protected like a child,” she said in a tight voice. “Like I were some fragile little girl.”
“People treat you like the rarest of leaders.”
Her eyes filled with moisture again. “Tell me, Shan. Tell me all.”
He began with what he had heard about Xie’s opposition on the Commission, which threatened Pao’s plans, then explained what he had seen on the surveillance videos. “Tserung and Dolma knew, and someone else, who tested the contents of his stomach.”
Dawa gave another sad smile. “My cousin Pavri is the assistant to the chief doctor in Zhongje. She worked as a traveling nurse for the remote villages, the closest thing to a doctor they knew, but came back to Yamdrok to be near Dolma and Tserung. They are all the family she has left.”
Shan recalled the demure, bespectacled Tibetan woman who assisted Lam. She would have known how to incise and close Xie’s stomach and use the lab to test its contents. She would have known, with her uncle, how to make the signs chalked on Lam’s walls. She had also been the one, he remembered, to frighten the infirmary staff with tales of Tibetans ghosts.
Dawa was silent a long time, dabbing at her cheeks. “You’re saying they suspected my father of secretly working against them. You didn’t say why.”
“He argued the Tibetan side in every case.”
“That would have been expected, and no one would have expected him to change the outcome. Surely it would not be reason to kill him.” She reached out and squeezed his arm. “Tell me, Shan.”
He spoke toward the snow-covered peaks, struggling to get the words out. “Did you really think they wouldn’t read his mail?”
She said nothing for several long breaths, then suddenly an agonized sob racked her body. “Father!” she cried. Her head dropped into her hands and she wept.
Shan put his hand on her back and she fell into his shoulder, still sobbing.
It was a long time before Dawa could speak. “Everything we do is touched by death,” she whispered. “He was the stronger of us. He would tell me always to think of death as only a rebirth.”
She straightened and scrubbed at her cheeks. “It was the Deputy Secretary who caused his death.”
“Someone acting on his instructions, yes.”
“You have to leave it alone, Shan. You don’t understand how dangerous Pao can be. Stay away from him. Too many others have been lost.”
“I have known many like him.”
“I doubt it. He has no soul. He kills people on a whim, even his own people.”
Shan turned to her in surprise. “Why do you say that?”
“We saw how he does it. Rather, Sergeant Gingri saw it. Even when he reported it, I wasn’t convinced. But then he showed me the video.”
Shan went very still. “Saw what exactly?”
“It was a little shrine with a tiny one-room chapel beside it, in one of those high passes on a back road into Lhasa. Gingri served in Lhadrung, and knows the army ways. Sometimes he finds out army secrets for us. An army officer made contact through a monk. He wanted to negotiate, to do something that would get him noticed in Lhasa, I suppose.”
“An officer in Lhadrung?”
“That tyrant Tan’s county, yes. We are constantly trying to find out which detainees are in what camp. It is agony for the families not to know where they are, not to have some assurance that they are at least still alive. At least when they know where their loved ones are they have the chance to send letters, even visit. It gives them hope, when hope is spread too thin. That officer was willing to give us lists of names, but he wanted concessions, something he could take to Lhasa. He was ambitious, trying to make a name for himself. Gingri decided to try a test of his goodwill. Thirty unregistered artifacts for the list of one camp’s detainees. The captain agreed, and Gingri set up an exchange at that shrine. Very remote, but right along the side of the road for easy access.”
“Lu,” Shan said. “Captain Lu was his name.”
Dawa paused and pursed her lips. “Perhaps. Ask Gingri. The sergeant took four of his men with him, and they were working on restoring the chorten as cover. The captain arrived, and surrendered the list. They were putting the artifacts into his car when another car arrived, a big black utility vehicle. Pao got out. He had a gun and starting shouting, shooting in the air, cursing all the Tibetans. Everyone fled. But when Sergeant Gingri reached the cover of the rocks, he turned on his cell phone.”
“But there are no cell towers in those mountains.”
“We distribute phones to all those who help us. Not to make calls but to take photos and videos. Cheaper than cameras.” She pulled out a small phone and tapped the screen several times, then extended it to Shan. “See for yourself.”
The image was surprisingly clear. Shan instantly recognized both the oversized black utility vehicle that Pao used as his limousine, and Captain Lu. The Deputy Secretary paced around the chorten, first speaking with a short person in black, no doubt another knob, who stayed in the shadows behind the car, then raising a fist at several Tibetans who were running up the slope. Puffs of smoke appeared as he fired more warning shots. He paused by Lu and spoke, then conferred with the knob at the other side of his car. Suddenly he stepped deliberately toward the officer, who was now loading the remaining artifacts into his car. Pao raised the pistol and shot Lu in the back of the head. A frightened gasp could be heard on the video as Gingri backed away, turning off the camera.
Tan’s instincts, as always, had been right: Pao had murdered Captain Lu.
“What have you done with this recording?” he urgently asked.
“Not a thing. A senior Party official and a senior Chinese officer. Not our concern. Pao took all the artifacts, then put Lu’s body in his car and that knob with Pao drove it away, following Pao. A few days later, a crew came and destroyed the shrine.” She shrugged. “We will build another.”
“But we can use this to stop him.”
Her answer was quick and forceful. “No. We cannot, Shan. We would stir up an earthquake in Beijing. They would react with massive arrests and closing of still more gompas. Exercising subtle leverage, for small victories, is our goal.”
“You are sitting on evidence that would change the balance of power in Tibet.”
“From one Pao to another? What does that get us?”
Shan looked into the dark waters. “Justice,” he said in a small voice.
Dawa made a sound that may have been a laugh. “We should raise a statue of you. The last man alive who thinks justice can still be found in Tibet.”
“Then why even allow us to enter your sacred valley?”
“We will surrender the video camera we took at Shetok for you to return to Major Sung, with the video of him with the burning Maos. We made copies.”
“Why? Why are we here?”
“To save the three prisoners. And to save Tserung and Dolma, for if we did nothing, they would have tried to arrange their escape and paid dearly for it.”
“Lokesh, Yosen, and Pema.” Shan repeated the names of the prisoners as he weighed her words. “How could you have known I would bring them?”
“You would never leave without Lokesh. And we made sure you knew Yosen could find me, and that you glimpsed Pema’s missing finger,” she added with a small smile. “Sorry.”
“This is what you mean by small victories.”
“Now Sung will listen. Sung understands that the purbas will negotiate.”
“He will not last if he has no leverage against Pao. Give me the recording of Pao killing Captain Lu, and I will see that he listens. To negotiate what?” he added.
Dawa took a long time to answer. She finally looked back with wise, sad eyes. “Everything we do is about the same thing. We negotiate the end of time.”
She rose and left him to sit alone and ponder the wonders of Takhtang. It was probably the closest he would ever come to the fabled Shangri-la. He knew he would have to leave all too quickly, but knowing it existed would give him strength. He studied the landscape in the rising moon, trying to memorize all that he could so he could describe it to his son. Chortens gleamed in the moonlight. The light grey rock of the overhanging cliffs were like a glowing half dome. An antelope grazed by a grove of trees. A woman stood in the stream.
He stood and had taken a few steps toward her when the American woman turned and approached him.
“It’s life-giving water, the Tibetans say,” Shan observed. “The streams that flow out of spiritual power places.”
Hannah gave a small, silent nod, then made a sweeping motion with her hands that took in the entire valley. “I feel so light when I am here, like sometimes I might just float away. Of course, Judson says it is just the altitude.”
“I’m expecting a five-hundred-year-old lama to appear at any moment,” Shan replied.
A smile lit her face and she abruptly stepped forward and embraced him. She squeezed him tightly, then held his hand as she released him. “You’ll never know what this has meant to me, having the chance to see Taktsang again. You made it possible, Shan. Thank you.”
He began to grasp the pain he saw in her eyes. “You don’t think you’ll be allowed back in Tibet, because you won’t support the government on the Commission.”
Hannah did not respond to his suggestion. “I was here before, with Dawa and her father. On the last night, Xie saw I was sad over leaving. He said whoever visits Takhtang is lifted by it forever, that it would be part of me always.” She pulled her hand away and winced, holding her belly.
“Can I help?” Shan asked.
She smiled again through her pain. “My spirit delights in this place, but not my body. You know. The altitude. Maybe you can help me back to the stream. It does seem to help.”
Hannah leaned on Shan, and for a moment seemed a frail old woman. But when they reached the water, her eyes were clear of pain, and she bent to moisten her face. As he backed away, she paused. “You need to let the spirits have their way, Shan.”
It sounded like a warning.
* * *
His slumber was disturbed by dreams of demons and burning monks who sat in the library calmly reading manuscripts as flames roared around them. After awaking with a thumping heart for the third time, he rose and wandered outside into a predawn haze and sat against a juniper tree. Sleep overtook him again, and when he awoke, sheep were grazing beside him. Larks sang overhead, and from somewhere below came the metallic thumping of one of the large bells that were struck by swinging beams. On the bench by the river he saw to his surprise that Tuan was sitting in the dawn with Yosen. As he watched, the nun rose, placed her palm on Tuan’s head, and returned to the temple. Tuan remained sitting on the bench, looking into the water. When he did not move for several minutes, Shan joined him.
“That old nun Pema asked me to walk at midnight,” the Religious Affairs officer said when Shan sat beside him. “She took me up near where we entered the valley, and we sat where we could see that little chorten on the cliff. I asked why we were there, and she just said to pray and wait. After a few minutes, it appeared. That white yak. But it was different.” Tuan glanced up uneasily. “It was glowing, Shan, I swear it, and it seemed to be floating in the air. It dropped its head to the chorten, moved all around it like a pilgrim might, then stood at the cliff edge and surveyed the valley like it was its lord. She said it was only a lesser earth god, but a very old one.”
“Did you?”
“Did I what?”
“Pray.”
Tuan gave an amused snort. “Sure, sure. In Religious Affairs, we always know how to pray, to fit in with those in robes. You know. Om mani, om mani, om mani Mao. We used to sing it to the tune of one of those American rock songs.”
“So you didn’t pray.”
Something new had entered Tuan’s features since he learned of his mother’s poetry, and it flickered on his face now, a confused expression that held a hint of shame. “I saw it, damn it. Like nothing else before. I think there must be some minerals it eats that make it glow. And there was a full moon. One of our trainers used to tell us about the sleight of hand of the old lamas. Some kinds of incense are proved to cause hallucinations.”
“You’re trying very hard not to be who you are.”
Tuan’s laugh was forced and shallow.
“You don’t have to go back.”
“What, stay with a bunch of old women in a stone house?”
“Stay with a brave band of holy people who risk their lives to keep vital things alive. You know things that could be useful to them. Sometimes the best monks are those who take the robe later in life.”
“He needs me. I’m not sure he can get by without me.”
Something cold settled in Shan’s gut. “You mean Pao.”
“The Emperor. We have a big future. We’re both young. He will get a huge job in Beijing, and I’ll be at his side. We’ll get one of those big Party houses. He says I can run it, like the steward of an old castle. I’ll buy a convertible.”
“Sounds like you need him more than he needs you.”
“He’s complicated. Very intelligent. But naïve in some ways. He can’t even drive a car. When we are on the road, he listens to Western symphonies to calm himself, but if he sees a dog on the pavement, he orders me to run it down and laughs, saying it is a reincarnated monk, and now the monk can be a cockroach. When he’s drunk, I swerve at the last moment to miss it and he doesn’t even know. He can get very angry. He can be very generous. He’ll give me a bag of cash this time.”
Shan’s heart sank. “You can’t betray them.”
“I told you before. I have rules. Fifty percent. Supply and demand. The Chairman himself says we live in a socialist economy with capitalist features. That’s me. Otherwise, he might decide he’s done with me. He gets dangerous.”
It was Shan’s turn to stare into the river.
“I’ve been thinking about it. I’ll tell him about the procedure leading up to the immolations, mostly just confirming what they already know. The purbas are very fastidious about it, you know. They could write it up like a ritual in one of those peches. Of course, many make the sacrifice on their own, but if you go to the purbas to say you have decided to die, you meet with a nun. Then you sit in a circle and recite that old prayer from the Panchen Lama about being released from fear. They have copies of it they hand out like flyers. They tell you that if it’s done with a pure heart, it becomes a holy act. If you still want to burn, you cut your identity card in half. It’s their ticket, their way of saying they are done forever with the Chinese government. Then everyone knows for sure it will happen. They all weep and embrace, then encourage you to write your poem, your death poem. If you are still committed, they will do what they can to keep the police away. They promise they will try to recover your body for a sky burial. But in any event, they promise to do the full forty-nine days of death ritual for you. Sometimes it’s done right here. That’s what those nuns were doing in those little chapels we saw when we first arrived. Higher up the mountain, there’s a vulture ground they use.”
They were silent a long time.
Tuan picked at a piece of loose bark on the bench. “You could stop me,” he said in a strangely apologetic voice. “I’m not much of a fighter.”
“Neither am I.”
They watched one of the huge mountain raptors, a lammergeire, circle over the valley, riding the current of wind that poured out of the snow mountains. “This is a sacred place.” Shan said. “If troops come, they will burn all those old books.”
“I told you what I will report. No need for more. I don’t know about this valley or how to get here. I’ll say I was blindfolded. I just saw a bunch of mountains and caves. I won’t say anything about Lokesh’s prophecy that she will be the mother of the next leader. She’d become the most wanted criminal in all of China. Dawa won’t be here anyway. I’ll just tell Pao she is on the move. No need to bother with this place.”
Shan looked up. “Why do you say that?”
“Some of the nuns were talking about it while I was reading those poems. She’s leaving. They’re very upset. They act like she will never return. I think maybe learning from Pema and Yosen about how the families of the victims are being tortured and imprisoned changed something inside her. I saw Dawa and the American woman in the middle of the night, walking along the stream. Yosen said I couldn’t disturb them, that Dawa just has unfinished business with Pao and the Commission. She said something about a rally near Zhongje. That’s the kind of opposition they prefer. Gather a couple hundred farmers and shepherds and chant and sing songs. Some of those nuns have a dozen scars from baton blows. They wear them like badges of honor. I don’t know why they don’t just leave, or hole up here for months. It’s like they prefer a direct confrontation. They want to be martyrs.”
A fist seemed to close around Shan’s heart. If Pao would bargain, he had no doubt Dawa would give herself up to save those families.
Tuan stood and threw a pebble into the stream. “They probably won’t let me walk away anyway. That sergeant will put a bullet in me when I leave the valley.”
“They trust you more than you trust yourself.”
“Then they are fools. I will disappoint them every time.”