Bone Mountain (61 page)

In the dim light on the far side of the fire Shan became aware of another figure, seated on the back of a horse cart, a dour Tibetan man, Shan’s age, flanked by two of the purbas he had seen on the ridge. Shan rose and edged around the ring. But when he got close to the cart the nearest purba stepped in front of him. The man on the cart stared at Shan with hooded eyes, showing no greeting, no emotion of any kind. In the firelight Shan could see two deep gutters of scar tissue along the man’s cheek, and the flame in his eyes. He saw much that he recognized in those eyes. They were prisoner’s eyes, filled with a weary, sad intelligence, but they were also extraordinarily fierce eyes, lit with fury and righteousness alike. Shan had seen the same eyes on thangkas of wrathful protector demons.

Shan took another step forward and the purba’s hand closed around his arm like a cold vise, and pressed it against something near his chest. A pistol butt, in a shoulder holster. Shan froze, then stepped back out of the purba’s grip, studying the lines of scar tissue on the man’s cheeks. It was the one they called the Tiger, he somehow knew, the legendary purba leader with the stripes on his face. The two most wanted men in all Tibet were at Khodrak’s gompa.

Shan retreated to the far side of the circle. He wandered out onto the plain, into the comfort of the night, trying to fight the new fear that the Tiger’s presence had ignited. An owl called. The mountains on the horizon glistened in the moonlight. The appearance of the purba leader unsettled Shan as much as if knobs had risen out of the fire. The Tiger was not there to help Shan. The Tiger was famed as a man of action. It was said that his mother had been Moslem. Moslems believed in retribution. The Tiger was so hunted, so prominently marked for destruction he could easily have an army of knobs on his trail at that moment. The words Anya had spoken their first night on Yapchi mountain came back to him. So many have died, the oracle had said, so many still to die.

Shan found himself sitting, staring at the sky, beseeching the stars. If only he could just take Lokesh and go. He had no more hope to give the Tibetans, he had no way of seeing through the mysteries that shrouded the gompa and Yapchi Valley. All he could see was the danger.

Time passed, perhaps an hour. Something moved in the darkness, ahead of him. A man, sitting on a rock a hundred feet away, was holding something that glinted in the moonlight, looking not at Shan but out onto the plain.

“The lamas have no patience for me,” a deep voice suddenly said behind him. “They say I shouldn’t expect to achieve so much in one lifetime.” It was an extraordinary voice, hoarse and powerful, like a growl but not exactly. How had Lhandro described it? Like someone roaring in a whisper, because the knobs had broken his voicebox.

As Shan turned toward the man with the ravaged face he saw a second guard sitting on a rock, fifty feet away.

“I told them when I was young I had teachers from the tantric schools who taught that with the right practice you could achieve Buddhahood in one lifetime.”

Strangely, Shan realized, he had never heard another name for the Tiger. He shifted uneasily, wondering how many more men with guns lurked in the shadows. And how often the Tiger spoke with Chinese in the night.

“I tell them compared with that, what I seek seems so little.” The man sat beside Shan and watched the sky a moment. “When you’re always on the run, always moving after sunset, the night sky becomes your home,” he said, and for a moment sounded very tired. “You have a man who wrote a letter. Colonel Lin is no friend of Tibet. He has been written, more than once.”

Written. The Tiger meant written in the Lotus Book, the purbas’ compendium of atrocities against Tibetans.

“I would like to spend time with that Colonel,” the purba leader said in a businesslike tone. “Take him somewhere. Valuable things could be learned.”

Shan felt his belly clench. “Lin is injured,” he said weakly. “Why?” he asked, looking into the man’s ravaged face. “Why would you bother to speak to me about this? The purbas know where Lin is.”

The man said nothing. Something moved in the distance, and one of the purbas with the guns leapt up. After a moment Shan heard the clatter of small hooves, those of a wild goat or gazelle, and the man returned to his post. Shan studied the Tiger. He seemed like another rock in the night, a lonely statue whose face was slowly being etched away by the wind. Shan realized that the Tiger might have answers to many of the questions that had been plaguing him.

“Why are there no knobs here?” he asked suddenly. “Why didn’t the knobs take the abbot of Sangchi?”

The Tiger sighed. “The ones who have him are knobs and not knobs. Things are adrift in this district. Even those knob doctors aren’t sure who to report to. We intercepted a request they sent to Lhasa, asking for instructions. They want to go up onto the Plain of Flowers to find the medicine lama. But Tuan and that abbot Khodrak want them here.”

“But if monks become the political enforcers,” Shan said. “What can the people do to…” his voice trailed off.

“Right,” the Tiger said grimly.

“Somo said there are other knobs working for Tuan somewhere else. Five others.”

“We can’t find them. No one knows where they are. We have tightened security everywhere. No new faces are permitted at any of our meetings now. We have word out all over the district. But those five are not to be found. Everyone is wary, very nervous. It is getting more and more dangerous.”

They sat in silence. Crickets sounded somewhere.

“I went to that hermitage where you started but you had already gone,” the Tiger said suddenly. “The dropka who were there told us about an old lama taking away the body of Drakte. We followed, and stayed at the durtro until the vultures were done, trying to understand what had happened to him. We talked into the night, and when we awoke your lama was gone, into the mountains.”

Had he been wrong about the Tiger? Was he there about Drakte, about finding revenge for Drakte? “I know Drakte was at Amdo town that night,” Shan said. “Getting one of the Lotus Books. But why there, why couldn’t someone have met him away from the dangers of a town?”

“That damned Serenity Campaign. The howlers are keeping scores for economic success. We laughed about it at first. But this gompa, this Khodrak, decided he had to have the best score in Tibet. And he did.” The Tiger gazed at a particularly bright star.

“But it has to be lies,” Shan said.

“Exactly. Drakte found out. He had other duties, but he was from this region originally, and he would not allow Khodrak to get away with the lies. It became a personal quest of his, even though I opposed it. When he finished his work for us in the south he roamed through this district to collect the true data. When he found out that a boyhood friend was Tuan’s assistant he said it was destined, that he was meant to give it to that Chao. And Chao readily agreed, even said he would trade Drakte something just as good.”

“But they were attacked.”

“It must have been a trap. To a man like Tuan, Chao would have been a traitor. Chao died, and Drakte was fatally wounded. The Lotus Book Drakte carried was lost.”

“How did Chao die, exactly?”

“A stab in the back, wide, like a butcher’s knife. They were at a garage. It could have been an ax. Chao died immediately. If Drakte had come to us we probably could have saved him. But he went to you instead.”

“You sound convinced they did not attack each other.”

“That bastard Tuan must have discovered them. He would have been furious with Chao. Chao could have ruined him. Easiest solution for Tuan would have been to kill them both. He was in Amdo that night, in meetings about the Serenity Campaign. He could kill Chao, say reactionaries did it, and call him a martyr.”

They listened to the crickets again. The Tiger pointed out a falling star.

“Why speak with me?” Shan asked again.

“I told you. Because of that colonel. There’s a woman back there who speaks like a nun,” the Tiger said, “from that village that was burned. She says we can’t have Lin unless you agree.”

They were silent again, for a long time. “All they wanted was to complete their deity,” Shan said in a sad, lonely voice.

“All I ever wanted was to grow barley with my father,” the feared leader of the purbas replied, in a tone that seemed to match Shan’s.

“That deity has to be mended in the light, not in shadow,” Shan said after another silence, and he looked skyward, puzzled at the words that had drifted off his tongue. He heard the purba general sigh, and he waited for an answer, but none came. He turned and saw that the Tiger was gone.

When he returned to the campfire the dropka had retired to their tents and Winslow was huddled with Nyma, Lhandro, and Somo. Somo asked Shan to repeat in detail everything he had seen inside the gompa, and they reviewed their plan once more. Everything was ready, but no one had anticipated that Lokesh could not walk.

“That,” Winslow said slowly, sprouting a grin, “must be the reason I am here.”

*   *   *

The little bell came from far away to reach him, its first peal sounding like an alarm in his consciousness. Shan sat upright in his blanket. It was before dawn. He had slept fitfully, kept awake by Winslow as Lhandro and Nyma taught him a strange dance step in the shadow of the truck. The bell sounded again. Something inside him had been listening, the lao gai Shan who had learned all the many types of bells, sirens, and whistles used by the knobs and their prison guards, had learned to know which bell summoned guards with rifles, and which brought guards to search their barracks or carry a prisoner to the infirmary. Slowly he realized this bell was to summon monks to their predawn prayers.

He rose and stepped around the sleeping Tibetans and through the grey light toward the gates. A solitary guard leaned against one pillar. Electric lights illuminated the assembly hall. Monks were filing out of the sleeping quarters that lined the two side walls of the gompa and entering the lhakang.

“Two long cars came in the night,” a voice said at his shoulder. Somo. “Red Flags I think,” she added, referring to the limousines used by many of Tibet’s senior officials.

“The Bureau of Religious Affairs,” Shan said. “The ones Tenzin said were coming from regional headquarters.”

They watched from the truck as the monks streamed out of the lhakang an hour later, carrying benches and cushions to the courtyard in front of the administrative building. A table was brought from the dining hall to the building entrance and by fastening boards to it several monks converted it to a makeshift speaking platform with a wooden crate for a step. A man in a shirt and tie appeared in the doorway with another Chinese flag, which he affixed to the front of the platform. Shan followed the first group of Tibetans into the gompa, the guard watching not the Tibetans now but the officials at the entrance.

The window of the upstairs office opened and a large loudspeaker appeared in it. Anthems began to play, until abruptly someone was addressing them. “Citizens of China,” a thin voice said. “We salute you. It is you, the children of industry, who have made us a great nation and who will make us greater still.” It was the radio. Someone had patched in the May Day speeches from Beijing. A murmur shot through the courtyard. It was the supreme Chairman himself, addressing the nation.

Padme, wearing his robe over a pair of blue jeans, appeared in the door with an uncomfortable expression, studying the disorganized crowd. He glanced up at the window as though debating whether to turn the radio off, then quickly ordered everyone in the courtyard to be seated on the benches and carpets and listen. It might appear unpatriotic not to stop and listen while the Chairman spoke, and even more so to turn the radio off now that the speech had started. Padme dispatched the guard to command the Tibetans outside the gates to attend, darted inside, and reappeared a moment later, without his jeans, to sit in one of the chairs on the podium. Shan remembered the blue jeans they had seen at the burned patch of herbs, and how Winslow had given the monk the yellow nylon vest from the burned meadow to wear. When they had arrived at the gompa with the injured Padme, he had been recognized from a distance. Because the vest, like the jeans, had belonged to Padme.

A tall distinguished Tibetan appeared, grey-haired, wearing a business suit, closely followed by a stocky Han in nearly identical attire, hurriedly straightening his tie. Emissaries from the Bureau of Religious Affairs. The two mounted on the podium and sat beside Padme. Dropka and rongpa began to arrive in family groups and sat on the carpets near the wall.

Then, as the crowd dutifully stared at the loudspeaker in the window, Shan watched as two men in light blue uniforms carried a stretcher with an old man from behind the central building toward the medical station. He sighed with relief. Tenzin had understood the bargain he had to reach with Khodrak. Shan gestured to Gyalo and the two men inched their way along the wall.

Ten minutes later, neatly attired in the white tunics of the kitchen workers, Shan and Gyalo approached the medical team and announced to a technician sitting by the door that they had been sent for the old man with the bad foot. They waited another ten minutes, then the door of the station opened and a man in blue, a stethoscope around his neck, motioned them inside.

“He’s sedated. A bad fall, that one. Had to put on a walking cast to stabilize the bone. He’ll need crutches for a month at least.” The man hovered over a clipboard with an incomplete form, then someone called for him to join the celebration. Chairman Khodrak was waiting with his visitors. The doctor sighed and tossed the clipboard on the table. Suddenly the technician appeared in the door. The man ignored Shan and Gyalo at first but then he stilled and slowly faced the monk. “He’s one of those!” the man cried out, pointing at Gyalo. “One of the banned ones! The chairman must be told!”

The doctor gaped in confusion then stared at the radio handset that sat on the table six feet away. He was leaning forward, seemingly about to reach for the radio, when a rope materialized and settled over the technician, pinning his arms to his side. Before the man could cry out, a wooden post hit him on the head, one of the stanchions that had held the rope outside the clinic. The man slumped to the floor, colliding with the doctor as he leapt for the radio. A long, lanky form sprang through the air and Winslow was on top of the doctor, straddling him. The doctor fought for a moment, tearing at the American’s clothes. The American launched an arcing blow with his fist that connected with the doctor’s jaw and the man fell back, limp.