The old truck groaned as it crested the last hill before Lhasa, then backfired as the Tibetan driver downshifted, scattering a flock of sheep grazing along the road. The capital spread out before them, the Potala glowing in the early rays of dawn.
“Don’t see many Chinese wearing one of those,” the burly driver said, nodding at Shan’s chest. “You one of those mixed bloods?”
Shan had not realized his hand was gripping his prayer amulet. “Just another pilgrim,” he replied, and saw now the little plastic Buddha glued in front of the speedometer. The burly driver had at first refused his request for a ride when Shan approached him at the highway teahouse, reminding Shan of the Public Security rules against hitchhiking. When Shan handed him a twenty-renminbi note and told him he was a paying passenger, the driver assumed a businesslike air, even producing a small cushion to cover the torn seat.
“Five more if you drop me at the hospital,” Shan ventured. The Governor of Lhadrung County was on medical leave in Lhasa, his office had reported.
“Old one or new one?”
Shan thought a moment. “The new one.”
The driver dipped his head in affirmation, then pounded his horn to hurry along the yak that was crossing the road.
Half an hour later, Shan stood on the top floor of the small, modern hospital, watching nurses finish their rounds. In a washroom off the lobby, he had changed into the white shirt and tie he carried in a plastic bag, then lifted an unattended clipboard and begun his own rounds. China was a land overflowing with inspectors and auditors, and it was the simplest of disguises.
The equipment and furnishings on the top floor were much more expensive than those on the levels Shan had explored below. The private rooms they served were almost unheard of in China. Here too was another enclave reserved for the upper class of the classless society. He moved slowly along the corridor, listening to voices in the rooms, glimpsing inside those with open doors, then his gaze settled on a corner suite. He moved quickly when the corridor cleared, opening the door and shutting it behind him.
A tall, sinewy man was in a robe, standing at a window. He said nothing for several long moments.
“Shit,” he finally muttered. “This is supposed to be a secret. Security is a joke here.”
Shan tossed the clipboard on a chair. “If challenged, I would just say I am a high-ranking Commissioner, with an armband to prove it. But you know all about that.”
Everyone trembled in the presence of the infamous Colonel Tan, the attack dog Governor of Lhadrung County and overlord of its infamous labor camp network. The Tan he knew was accustomed to expressing himself with fury and often violence, and Shan had braced himself for the inevitable tirade. But this man was a scarecrow of Tan. He replied with only a thin, challenging smile and watched as Shan read the report hanging at the end of the bed.
“They took a lung out,” Shan observed.
“I had two. I could call security. I could make it go badly.”
“For me or for Lokesh?”
Tan frowned. “It’s the flavor of the season. Collateral manipulation, they’re calling it now. Don’t aim directly at the target. Go for the family of the target. You’re a tough son of a bitch, Shan, but touch the old man, and you crumble.”
“They’ve already started on him. Why have you done this to us?”
Tan shook his head in disgust. “Blind and ungrateful as ever. Any sane man would consider it an honor. Perform well, and there will be rewards. A promotion, even.”
“You mean I could aspire to senior ditch inspector?” Shan shot back.
Tan’s grin had no warmth. It was a complicated equation that defined their relationship. Shan had helped Tan solve a series of brutal murders and in return was unofficially released, meaning he had no official identity, keeping him in Lhadrung, where he needed Tan’s protection to survive. He had been released from one prison into a broader prison. When more crimes occurred, Tan had lured Shan out of his mountain retreat by transferring Shan’s inmate son into his former prison, the 404th. When Shan saved Tan from being executed for murder the year before, Tan had given him a job, with a legal though negligible identity.
Tan walked unsteadily to the window and opened it, wheezing from the effort. From around his neck he pulled a key on a lanyard and unlocked a military trunk braced on two chairs along the wall. He extracted a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, lit a cigarette, and locked the trunk again before stepping back to the window. He blew a long plume of smoke against the glass. “If you drop a viper into a barrel of monkeys, there won’t be so many monkeys left when the viper leaves.”
“I am a poor excuse for a viper.”
“You are the best of snakes. The invisible one. Look at you. Those Party pricks don’t even see you. You’re just a body they urgently needed to fill out an armband for a few weeks. You’re more dangerous than a viper to them. But the wonderful thing is that only you and I know that.”
Tan glanced at Shan’s hand. He had forgotten he was holding a bag. He dropped it on the bedside table. Tan warily upended it, spilling out a cellophane sack of hard candy.
“It’s just from the shop downstairs,” Shan said uneasily.
Tan lifted the candy with a confused expression. It seemed to deflate him. He gave a reluctant nod, then quickly hid the bag in a bedside drawer.
“Somebody connected to the Commission has upset you, and you want them punished,” Shan suggested.
“Don’t insult me. Once I was the best in the entire army at hounding a regiment of armored infantry across mountainous terrain. Now I run the most efficient hard labor camps in the country. If there is anything I excel at, it is punishing people.”
Shan weighed his words. Even in his weakened state, Tan needed no help with problems that were solved with brute force and authority. “You don’t like what the Commission is doing,” he ventured.
Tan drew deeply on his cigarette and said nothing.
Shan tried again. “You want the Commission to fail.”
Tan’s only acknowledgment was a flicker of his eyebrow.
When the Commission finished its business, Tibetans would be punished, which had never bothered Tan before. But the colonel, Shan well knew, was a complex man. He was a fervent patriot who enforced the policies of Beijing with an iron fist. But he despised corruption and loathed the new breed who earned power not with blood and toil as he had but with schemes and coddling of bureaucrats in Beijing.
Tan paced silently along the window, invigorated by the tobacco, then halted and stared at Shan. Shan hated the bond between them but could not deny it. He was Tan’s weapon, but he had no idea what he was being aimed at. The Commission was being used as another way of repressing Tibetans, but the colonel had never been shy to do that himself.
When Tan spoke, it was in a hoarse whisper. “Justice is a blind bitch who grew fat and lazy in Tibet.”
Shan returned the icy stare, breaking off only when the door behind him was abruptly thrown open.
“Ai yi!” a nurse screeched as she hurried into the room, balancing a tray of sterile instruments. “I knew I smelled tobacco! Do you have a death wish, you old fool?” she barked at Tan. She extended one hand from the tray of instruments to grab his cigarette. Tan deftly stepped to the side and tripped her. As she landed sprawling on the floor amid the syringes and tubes, Tan flicked his cigarette out the window and climbed into his bed.
* * *
By early afternoon, Shan was back with the Commission, listening to Choi’s recitation of another case. “Kunchok Norbu, age thirty-four, in Qizang Autonomous Prefecture, died in an immolation along the road in front of the factory where she worked. Tibetans reported her death an act of protest despite clear evidence to the contrary.”
Shan looked up. This was the first time he had heard Choi even mention the word “protest.”
“In fact,” the Chairman continued, “the woman was engaged in a sexual affair with a coworker. When her husband found out, he fought with his wife. She threatened him with a knife. He pushed her away—she struck her head and died. He burned her body that very day, for fear the police would think him a murderer.”
Shan found himself drawing an oval intersected by a crescent, the symbol Pema had sketched in the prisoner wagon, the symbol drawn on several death poems. It could be a pictograph. Chinese characters all evolved from images of natural objects that had become more and more abstract over the centuries. But all he could see were a moon and an egg.
When the doors opened, he assumed Miss Lin was leading in her squad of attendants with fresh tea. But then a chair was pulled from the table and a frightened Tibetan man sat, with Lin and a knob standing behind him.
“The victim’s husband, Tenzin,” Choi announced, “is here to explain in his own words how the public reports were distorted.”
Shan stared in disbelief. The man called Tenzin exchanged a long silent glance with Kolsang, then turned to Vogel, the senior foreigner. “My wife and I married late,” he intoned in a flat voice as Zhu translated. “We wanted children but none came. We argued. I would get drunk and she would leave me alone at night. When I discovered she was going to the house of a man she worked with at the factory, I became blind with rage. We struck each other. She fell and hit her head. I never meant for her to die.” He finally noticed his hands were shaking and removed them from the table.
“I panicked. I was too scared to report her death to the police. I had some gas from the old tiller we use. I burned my wife. Later, monks came and put a piece of yellow, blue, and red cloth and a poem by her and called it a protest.”
No one spoke. Vogel noisily sipped his tea. Judson and Hannah Oglesby stared at the man in confusion. Kolsang stared at his notepad. A narrow grin rose on Zhu’s face.
“What kind of factory was it?” Shan asked.
Choi made an exasperated clucking sound.
Tenzin began to look over his shoulder, then seemed to reconsider. He brought his hands back up and locked them together. “One of those chemical factories with big smokestacks.”
“If you were trying to hide your wife’s body, why burn it by the roadside?” Shan pressed.
Choi raised a palm toward Shan. “Our rules don’t provide for examination of witnesses,” she interrupted.
“Then a question for you, Madam Chairman,” Shan said. “What becomes of Comrade Tenzin?”
“He is to be commended for coming forward with the truth. No more than a few months’ administrative detention for mutilation of a corpse.”
Lin touched Tenzin’s shoulder and beckoned him to follow her out the door. As the prisoner stood, Shan noticed inflamed blotches on the man’s neck and shuddered. They were the marks from the bite of an electric cattle prod.
Choi dropped the file into the stack for mental breakdowns.
As if on cue, Vogel looked up. “So now we see,” the German said, gazing pointedly at Shan. “When we have direct testimony, it corroborates the file.”
Shan watched Tenzin move down the corridor, flanked by two uniformed knobs. He stumbled and the knobs seized his arms, dragging him out of sight.
Shan stared forlornly at the file in front of him. He would never sign a report filled with half truths and coerced witness testimony. But when he refused, he and Lokesh both would pay a terrible price. Could that be all Tan intended, for him to derail the Commission by refusing to endorse its findings? There had to be more, some invisible war between Tan and those behind the Commission.
He became aware of another group entering the room, of chairs being pushed back. He would ask questions of this witness no matter what Choi said. This time he would not— Suddenly he realized everyone in the room was standing. In the middle of the new arrivals, a face from the newspapers regarded Shan with amusement. Deputy Secretary Pao had come to visit his Commission. Shan obediently stood.
“An unexpected honor, Comrade Deputy Secretary!” Choi exclaimed. “We are deeply grateful that—”
Pao cut her off with an upraised hand and lowered himself into Choi’s chair, gesturing for the others to sit. Four uniformed knobs took up stations by the door. The man called the Emperor of Tibet appeared surprisingly robust, his chiseled features highlighted by a well-practiced smile.
“It is the motherland who is deeply grateful, for the dedication and diligence demonstrated by this Commission.” Pao nodded at each Commissioner in turn, speaking their names. When he came to Shan, his careful smile widened. His eyes were two black gems. “It truly takes a special talent and dedication for one to rise up out of the mud, as it were, to so adeptly serve the motherland. We salute you, Comrade Shan, and know you share our commitment to ending these terrible deaths.”
Shan bowed his head deferentially. “It is a unique and somber responsibility.”
“For a man of unique talents,” Pao replied. He fixed Shan with another stare, this one intense and scrutinizing, then made a gesture that swept in all those at the table. “Time is short and our work is weighty. Having direct witnesses will simplify your task, however. When I return next week, I look forward to reviewing your draft recommendations.”
The announcement clearly did not surprise Madam Choi, who was beaming.
“Sometimes I wonder,” Judson suddenly said.
Choi’s face turned to ice. Pao slowly turned toward the American. “Wonder what, Mr. Judson?”
“Is China punishing Tibetans so severely because they complain so, or are Tibetans complaining because China punishes them so severely?” Judson looked at the shocked faces turned his way and shrugged. “We are all so dedicated to finding the root cause of this tragic epidemic, as you said in your first speech in Lhasa.”
For a moment Pao’s face was empty, then his smile returned. “China is proud of her behavioral reform institutions, which strive so hard to address that dilemma.” He gestured out the window to the prison complex above. “Longtou, for example, has won innumerable awards for its innovative programs. I only wish I had time to take you on a personal tour so you could witness the good work for yourself. You would be most impressed.”
Miss Lin appeared, leading an attendant carrying a cardboard carton.
“I nearly forgot. We have jackets,” Pao announced, never dropping his practiced smile, and motioned to Lin, who began distributing plastic-wrapped jackets bearing the Commission’s logo.
“One hundred eighty-nine cases,” Shan declared as Pao rose to leave.
Choi’s eyes went wide. Pao looked back at Shan. “You too have something to add, comrade?”
“At last count, we had one hundred eighty-nine cases to review and barely a hundred have been presented to the Commission. We owe each case adequate time for consideration. The addition of witnesses adds a whole new dimension.”
Pao cast a peeved glance at Tuan. “I am sure Madam Choi and Herr Vogel will find a way.”
“But where cases are found to involve criminal conduct, surely there are legal standards to be analyzed as well.”
Pao clenched his jaw, then collected himself as if for public oratory, taking a deep breath and switching on the smile again. “Our legal standards, much as our policies on assimilation, all serve a higher political order. And share the same goals. Just this morning, I shared with Major Sung how Religious Affairs noted an upswing in Tibetan visitors at a small temple near the Lhasa airport. The Ministry of Transportation had discovered imbalances in inventories of aviation fuel. Public Security reported the hiring of two new Tibetans on ground crews who were photographed attending the temple. Arrests were made, and a hole in our security was filled. That is the kind of synergy that will drive the Commission to an efficient conclusion.” Pao extended his hands and twisted his palms upward. It was the benediction Party officials liked to give when closing ceremonies. He nodded to Choi, shook Vogel’s hand, and departed in a cloud of uniforms.
Miss Lin intercepted Shan in the hall when the afternoon session adjourned. “This way,” was all she said, and Shan dutifully followed her into the Commission offices. They passed the conference room, where samples of parchment were still laid out, and went on to the door of a corner office, where a uniformed knob stood guard. The soldier opened the door, then stood at attention as Shan entered.
Major Sung turned from the window where he stood. “The Deputy Secretary almost had Tuan’s head today. You manipulate us into visiting that immolation site. You don’t show up for scheduled Commission sessions. You slip away toward Lhasa for unaccounted hours. As a watcher, he is all but blind.”
“It is rare that I get to visit the provincial capital. Only an hour away, and so many tempting sights to see. Someone said former Administrator Deng went there for his family emergency. I was wondering if someone should check on him.”
Sung gave Shan a withering glance. “Leave it alone. None of your concern.”
“It’s difficult, Major. Old habits, you know. I was trained by senior investigators in Beijing to speculate about scenarios as a way of smoking out the truth. Like the scenario that Xie was murdered. And the one that Deng may have been killed to hide evidence of that murder.”
Sung’s countenance flared with color.
“You saw him burning, Major. You then restrained any further investigation. There was a struggle when he died. He spilled blood, which means there is physical evidence that he was acting against his will. When the truth comes out, it will reflect poorly on you.”
“When the truth comes out, the world will know it was another crime by the purbas.”
“So you admit he was murdered. And if you insist it was the purbas, then you acknowledge it was to avenge Xie. You therefore admit there were two murders.”
Sung’s brittle expression returned. “When you are on Pao’s Commission, you work only on Commission work. Nothing else. What you are engaged in, comrade, is a slow form of suicide.”
When Shan offered no reply, Sung nodded as if deciding he had made his point, then sat at his desk and pushed a folder toward Shan. The major spoke slowly, in an oddly contemplative voice. “Events move quickly, comrade. It would be unfortunate if our valuable work were frustrated because you misunderstood certain facts. I accept that your instincts as an inspector may still haunt you. Surely we can speak candidly. One professional to another.”
Shan lowered himself into the chair opposite Sung. On the desk in front of the major were two enlarged photographs. One was of an attractive young Tibetan woman of perhaps twenty, the kind of formal photograph used for travel documents. Beside it was a grainy photo taken from a distance with a cell phone or security camera of a tall woman in a robe. It could have been the same woman, years older. On the first photo, someone had written across the top the word University. On the second, there was a note that stated Small lotus tattoo, left temple and a name. Dawa.
Shan looked back up at Sung, realizing the real question wasn’t whether the major understood Deng had been murdered, it was why he was not sweeping Yamdrok and the surrounding countryside for the purbas he suspected.
“The reason we could accept rehabilitated criminals onto the Commission is that they are supposed to know exactly how much they have to lose. But you lie to us.”
Shan cocked his head, not understanding.
“You lie to us, to yourself, to the world. You are not actually rehabilitated.”
Shan looked up at the prison on the hill. “My greatest struggle has been trying to understand what that means.”
Sung gave a weary shrug. “We can crush you. We can take you away, and you can spend the rest of your life in a black hole without even knowing where you are. If you derail this Commission, Pao will no doubt insist upon it.” He gestured for Shan to open the file. “I would prefer another approach, to demonstrate to you why your activities are so counterproductive. It’s all there. The filthy secrets we don’t tell the foreigners. Beijing likes its summaries to be as short as possible. Only a dozen people in Tibet have seen this. My way of giving you one last chance. You may not take the folder out of this room. If you ever admit to reading it, I will say you stole it. Stole state secrets. A capital crime.”
Shan’s distrusting gaze lingered a long moment on Sung before he picked up the sheet of paper. The evidence was compiled in short paragraphs, in bullet format. The first bullet explained that all immolations prior to eighteen months earlier had used kerosene, gasoline, or lamp oil as the accelerant. Half of all since used a form of aviation fuel, and nearly all those within a hundred miles of Lhasa used the fuel, which was not commonly available in Tibet.
Analysis of witness statements from the incidents revealed that at twenty of the most recent incidents, the same three women had been seen—one very tall with a small tattoo of a lotus on her left temple, a young nun with a girlish face who sometimes wore the clothes of a herder, and a third older woman with a missing index finger on her left hand. At each of these locations, the partially burned flags of the Dalai Lama clique had been recovered.
Next came a statement that in the same period, small paper manifestos written in Tibetan began appearing near the bodies. More than half of all incidents within a hundred miles of Lhasa were accompanied by such papers, and all of those at which the women had been seen. None of them had the same wording, but they were written on the same distinctive paper, a coarse, parchmentlike material used in certain Tibetan prayer books.
Shan dropped the paper onto the desk. “Manifestos? I thought they were poems.”
“What it doesn’t say is that we have now identified the source of the paper for those prayer books.”
“Peches. They are called peches.”
“Whatever. Forensic analysis revealed that the paper had little grey yak hairs mixed in it. Religious Affairs has visited every monastery printing house within two hundred miles. The paper is produced only at a run-down monastery called Shetok, no more than an hour’s drive north of here. This woman Dawa grew up near there. She has been on a list of suspected purbas for years.” Sung reached across and retrieved the folder. “We are confronted by a conspiracy by the damned purbas, comrade. If Deng was marked for murder—”
“If?” Shan interrupted. “Meaning you at least admit you can’t account for him?”
Sung ignored him. “If he were marked for murder, it obviously would have been by the purbas. Their conspiracy involves at least forty deaths, probably many more. A conspiracy against the motherland. Some might call it war, except the fools are just killing themselves.”
The words twisted in Shan’s gut. This was the only way Tibetans could fight a war. “Attending suicides is not an act of murder.”
“Don’t be a fool. Murder. Abetting murder. Manslaughter. Treason. Playing with matches. I don’t care what the legal scholars want to call it. When they are caught, we’ll just call it a bullet in the head.”
* * *
The crow watched Longtou Prison like a sentinel, its head turning with the back-and-forth movement of the guards on the wall. It had joined Shan not long after he lowered himself onto a rock a quarter mile from the prison. Even at such a distance, Shan knew he risked being intercepted, but nonetheless he dropped into the shadow of an outcropping. He wanted to be close enough to see figures at the gates, to smell the ever-present prison stench, to hear familiar commands barked over loudspeakers. It made him feel closer to Lokesh.
He desperately needed the old man’s calming presence, wanted to hear his advice, even though he knew what it would be. Shan was too interested in forcing events, in seeking to influence outcomes in the pursuit of what he considered justice. The old man distrusted human notions of justice and believed Shan should stop getting in the way of destinies determined by the gods.
Shan had been so focused on the prison that only now did he notice the long, low mound in front of him. The entire slope was like one mass grave. There were many more dead on the mountain than living.
He found himself on his knees. When he was a boy, his extended family would make a solemn procession to the graveyard each spring to spend the day sweeping ancestors’ graves and burn paper offerings to the dead. They would kowtow seven times at each grave, always in order of age, meaning Shan was always last. His aunts had taught him the proper form of prostration when he was only three years old. He extended his arms now and bent to the ground. Seven times he kowtowed to the dead monks, the crow watching attentively. When he finished, it gave a caw of approval.
Lokesh would be fascinated by the crow that was lingering so close, would speak to it and wonder out loud if it held the spirit of an old acquaintance. More than once, Shan had watched a bird or one of the small alpine mammals light on Lokesh’s leg and listen with cocked head as the old man spoke to it.
“Were you a monk here, then?” Shan asked the bird.
The crow flapped its wings as if to fly, but only jumped down and walked along the rough gravel surface. Suddenly Shan realized the bird was walking over footprints. He knelt, examining the soil. The prints were of the soft-soled boots and shoes worn by Tibetans. Others were watching the prison, no doubt some of those who had been on the slope the day before the immolation. He stood, stirring the bird into the air, then followed the prints and the bird over the rolling slope. It was how Lokesh would search for lost shrines or sacred treasures concealed in mountain caches, following birds or marmots or squirrels. One day, they had followed a dragon-shaped cloud for miles.
Shan found himself entering the orchard above Yamdrok, then the grove of junipers that surrounded the ancient chapel. He cautiously stepped inside, worried that he might disturb villagers at worship. There was only one worshipper. As Shan knelt by a small altar in the back corner, Kolsang lit a stick of incense on the front altar, beside three identical sticks that had already burned out. When Shan turned to the corner altar, which bore a likeness of Tara, he discovered a folded paper left under the goddess. He begged the mother protector’s pardon and lifted the paper.
It was another list of the death poems, although one more had been added since the last:
Coming and going, paths get entangled
Let my lightning clear the way.
At the bottom of the paper, someone had drawn the oval intersected by the crescent.
Shan tried to focus on the little Tara to clear his mind, but to no avail. He retreated outside and reverently spun each of the cylinder prayer wheels mounted on the side of the building. The mani mantra, invoking the Compassionate Buddha, was elegantly inscribed on each bronze wheel, and with each rotation, the prayer was sent to the gods.
He let the wheels wind down, then spun them again and sat on a rough-hewn bench to watch them. Some old Tibetans would keep such wheels spinning for hours.
The rhythmic stroking of the priest’s rake on the gravel of the temple garden was always hynoptic to Shan. Once a month, his uncle would take him to an old Taoist temple at the edge of the city. They would pray with the aged priests, then help clean the crumbling temple. Afterwards, his uncle would test his progress in memorizing the Tao Te Ching by tossing his sticks and asking Shan to recite the verse their pattern represented. Only at the end of the day would they relax, drinking tea and eating rice cakes. His uncle, much older than his father, would speak of long-dead poets and, if Shan was lucky, of the precious tame pigeons, his prized possession, which were trained to fly overhead with tiny whistles fastened to their tailfeathers, descendants of birds that had performed in the imperial court.
“My father worries about those communists who give loud speeches on the radio,” Shan offered during a lapse in conversation.
The gentle old man tousled his hair. Shan could smell sandalwood and cardamom when he leaned over him. “My brother worries too much,” his uncle assured Shan. “They are like children at a party. They will wear themselves out and we will all get back to normal life. Tell him to turn his radio off.”
Suddenly Shan realized the wheels had stopped spinning. He was about to rise to spin them again when Kolsang appeared and did it for him.
The Tibetan Commissioner sat beside him. “The metalcraft on those drums is exquisite,” Kolsang observed. “Made centuries ago. I doubt it could be duplicated today. There is a legend that inside each is a relic of one of the ancient saints, which protects the chapel and the town. Even before I came to Yamdrok, I had heard stories of how these wheels will abruptly start spinning without the touch of a human hand. It’s the ghosts of Sungpa Abbey, they say.”
Neither rose when the wheels stopped spinning. The sun was setting. From the village came the sound of mothers calling children inside.
“The poems keep appearing, even in Zhongje,” Shan said. “If they aren’t careful, Pao will declare it a crime just to possess them.”
Kolsang gave a weary nod. “I think our people are tired of being careful. That’s why you and I are in Zhongje.”
Shan took a pencil and a scrap of paper from his pocket and sketched the oval and crescent. “Now this appears. Have you seen it before?”
“May I?” Kolsang asked, and took the paper and pencil from Shan. “The purbas have turned it into a simplified pictogram, like many Chinese characters.” He drew, but this time the oval narrowed at one end like a nose. The crescent he made was more like a curving cone, its wide base inside the oval. Then he added an eye.
“This is what he rides. A ram.” Kolsang saw the confusion in Shan’s eyes and continued. “A very old god, brought up from India. His wisdom burns away all delusion. He guards the hearth in many old homes.”
Shan suddenly remembered. “Agni.”
Kolsang nodded. “The fire god.”
Everything had started with a ride in a prison wagon. It was impossible that the simple farmer Pema would have known. But she had drawn the secret mark of the god of immolations.
A harsh caw broke their silence. The crow was on the chapel roof, looking at them. As Shan watched, the bird rose, flying toward Zhongje now. Shan understood. He had to speak with the man who had been touched by Agni.
* * *
The infirmary was darkened when he arrived. The doctor was in her office, on her knees with a bucket beside her, scrubbing the shadowed wall. Shan groped for the light switch. “Perhaps a little light would—,” he began as he flipped the switch, then froze.
The walls were covered with chalk drawings.
They had been drawn in obvious haste, yet with an expert hand. The biggest was of an angry god mounted on a ram, encircled by flames and flanked on either side by vengeful protector demons. On another wall were a man and woman, both seated, arms raised, surrounded by flames.
When Dr. Lam spoke, her voice was a near whisper. “Do you know who they are?”
“Gods and demons,” Shan stated, then turned to her. “Are you missing anything?”
“You mean did another body float away? No. Nothing seems to be missing. Nothing tangible. But when I arrived, my computer was warm. I had turned it off hours ago. Ghosts who know computers. How very contemporary.”
“What would you have on the computer that relates to the Commission?”
“Just the medical reports. All the Commissioners had health profiles, to confirm they could work at these altitudes. They have all been deleted.”
Shan paced slowly around the office, halting at a darkened doorway in the corner.
“Just a lab,” Lam said.
He pushed open the door and switched on the light. The lab seemed tidy and undisturbed.
Lam pushed past him and paced around the central island, studying the racks of test tubes and instruments. “Of course, they wouldn’t be in here. They wouldn’t have a clue how to—” Her words faded as she reached the microscope. A little paper loop bearing the mani mantra, prayer to the Compassionate Buddha, was hung on the tube.
Lam’s face tightened. She lit a Bunsen burner and, as if fearing contamination, lifted the loop with a pair of tweezers, ignited it, and dropped the burning paper into the sink. With swift, angry motions she began opening and shutting doors on the cabinets that lined the walls, scanning the orderly rows of chemicals and supplies. Halfway down the wall, she stopped, looking at several bottles that had been left near the edge of a shelf. The doctor picked up each bottle, studying its label, then returned each to its proper row.
“Reagents and solvents,” she announced in a bitter voice, then spun about and returned to her office.
Shan noted the name of each of the bottles that had been moved, and then, remembering the clandestine photocopies of death poems, stepped to the copier at the back of the lab. It was still warm. He gazed back at Lam’s office. Had he heard her correctly? Why would the purbas care about Commissioner health records?
Lam was already back on her knees, scrubbing her wall. As Shan began to roll up his sleeves, he realized there was another question, just as important. “Why haven’t you reported this, at least asked for help?”
“I’m done with Public Security ransacking my offices. And my own staff would be too frightened. My Tibetan assistant had her prayer amulet out yesterday, the one she always keeps inside her blouse. Some of my Chinese staff asked to touch it, for protection. Some asked for words to mantras.” She lifted her scrub brush again. “I take it these are flames,” she said, indicating the swirled patterns on the wall.
“The blaze of awareness,” Shan confirmed. “When used around demons like this, it is called kalagni. ‘Fire at the end of time.’”
“This one is going to be extinguished by the end of night,” Dr. Lam vowed, and energetically applied her brush.
Shan lifted another brush.
When they finished their task, dawn was only two hours away. Exhausted, neither spoke as they turned out the lights and headed with the buckets for the stairwell door. Shan took several steps before realizing Lam had stopped at the glass wall where the Commission gathered two days before.
Lam cursed under her breath, then led him through the side door into Kai’s room. She checked the instruments attached to the comatose man before stepping to a cabinet, where she filled a syringe from a small bottle. Shan reached into his pocket and checked two lists of names, one his original note of names from the burn trauma units and the second the names Tuan had given him that morning. There had been something new in Tuan’s eye since they spoke of his dead friend, an uneasy trust that hadn’t been there before. He reported only half of what he knew.
Lam’s hand was shaking when she injected the contents of the syringe into a port on the intravenous tube. “I just want this to be over,” she said.
For a horrible moment, Shan misunderstood. Kai began choking, and Shan was about to rip the tube away from his arm when Kai opened his eyes and cleared his throat. The doctor held a cup with a straw to his lips. He drank deeply and nodded his thanks.
“This is—” She hesitated, not certain how to explain their presence. “—this is Commissioner Shan. He has some questions for you,” she said, then leaned toward Shan. “Five minutes before he slips away again,” she whispered, then stepped outside the door and took a position by the front glass where she could see both the corridor and the stairwell.
“I drove through Gyantse once,” Shan said conversationally. “There was a complex of factories on the outskirts. Kilns and boilers and furnaces. How does a man not get burned?” He glanced at his lists. The name missing from Tuan’s note was Rikyo Dolge.
It was fear that twisted the man’s face now, not pain. “I failed to attend citizenship classes. I allowed myself to drift from the motherland. When criminals from India came and offered my family money, I forgot my duty. Reactionaries told me…” Kai faltered. “Reactionaries tried to … I was a puppet.”
“Reactionaries poisoned your mind,” Shan said, reciting the report back to him, “then made you a puppet for their act of terrorism.”
Kai brightened. “Yes. Like you said.”
“It must have been torture, that ambulance ride from Gyantse to Lhasa.”
“In Gyantse, my body screamed with pain for two days. Those Chinese doctors from Lhasa had better medicine. With morphine, I just floated.”
Shan helped him drink again. “You must miss your family.”
“They are going to get a new house.” Kai’s face clouded. “Am I supposed to say that?”
“Better leave that out, Rikyo,” Shan suggested, using the man’s Tibetan name. The man on the bed nodded as if grateful to know Shan was in on the conspiracy. “Who brought you here, Rikyo? Was it Major Sung?”
The Tibetan began a shrug that ended with a grimace. “Soldiers came. I thought I was being taken to one of their prisons. They just took me to see a man who asked if I knew my duty to the motherland.”
“That was in Lhasa?”
“He said forget about our meeting, forget it ever happened. He said it wasn’t real, that it was real only if he said so.”
Shan considered the words, not certain he’d heard correctly. “What was his name? Did he wear a uniform?”
“He wore a big gold watch. A very important man. He said forget we met.”
Shan pushed the straw back into his mouth and waited while the Tibetan sipped again. “But that was before you came here, Rikyo. Now the report has been made and you have done your duty. Was it in Lhasa?”
The peeling skin of the man’s forehead creased for a moment. “Okay, okay. In Lhasa.”
“What did the man in Lhasa look like? Did he wear a uniform?” he asked again.
“A white shirt and yellow tie. He said a great honor had fallen on me. He said afterwards, I would be flown in one of those fast Party jets to Chengdu for skin grafts. I will get all the morphine I want. I am to be a new man.”
“Did he tell you his name?”
Rikyo seemed to have trouble keeping his eyes open. He ran his finger across the ruined skin of his cheek in an odd checkmark motion then his head drooped into unconsciousness.