Authors: Eliot Pattison
Applause from outside interrupted. Shan hung up the phone, closed the drawer, and darted to the front window. Khodrak was patting Tenzin on the back. Shan began unbuttoning the jacket he had borrowed, turned toward the door, and froze. Director Tuan stood in the doorway, fixing Shan with a ravenous stare.
“I could have you shot,” Tuan hissed. “I could have a bullet in your head by nightfall. I have had you checked with the Ministry of Education. Impersonating a government worker. Breaching state security.”
“Perhaps you forget you are no longer with Public Security,” Shan observed woodenly.
The Director of Religious Affairs opened his mouth to speak, then was interrupted by more applause. “We don’t have time to worry about such niceties right now,” he sneered, and stepped into the room. “Whatever you are—fugitive, dropout, deserter from the army perhaps?—we will find out. Later we will have time to decide what to do with a man who impersonates a teacher. A vile thing to do. There are places we can keep you in chains until we decide how best to dispose of you.” He turned as though to call for assistance.
“I never said I was a teacher,” Shan shot back. “You jumped to conclusions. You also said I could be useful. You gave me your card.” All he could hope for was to keep Tuan off his stride, buy time for Somo and the others.
Tuan’s mouth opened but his words became lost in a sudden fit of coughing. He backed against the wall by the door, his hand pressing a handkerchief to his mouth. When the coughing stopped he closed his eyes a moment as if he had grown faint. As he lowered the handkerchief Shan saw pink spots on it. “What were you doing here?” Tuan snarled, as he stepped away from the wall. Anger still colored his voice but the fire in his eyes had dimmed.
“Watching the proceedings, like everyone else. It would be rude to enter the audience when such a prestigious guest is speaking.”
“You knew about him,” Tuan said accusingly. “You were with the abbot. He was probably hiding behind the hill that first day we saw you.”
“He never told us he was the abbot.”
The Director stepped past Shan to the window and stared at Tenzin, still on the platform, then looked back at Shan. “We were going to draw up papers today, to decide who he was going to be if he refused to cooperate. An illegal reactionary. Perhaps the killer of our beloved Chao,” he said icily. The threat was thinly veiled. Tuan needed to finish the hunt for Chao’s killer, his final victory leading up to the awards ceremony at Yapchi. Tenzin would have been a convenient candidate. Someone else would have to be found.
“But that was a problem for the Public Security Bureau,” Shan said, eyeing the open door. “Your problem is winning the Serenity Campaign.”
Tuan followed his gaze and sighed, slowly stepped to the door and shut it. For a moment he seemed like an old, weary man, not angry but bitter. “That,” the Director gloated, “has already been done. It only remains to collect our prize.”
Perhaps that was the mystery he should focus on, Shan thought. Perhaps he had not sufficiently weighed the stakes of the strange game Khodrak and Tuan played. “Your photograph in the Lhasa paper? A congratulatory letter from Beijing?” Such things would seem of little import to a man who kept such trophies in a dust-covered box. He remembered the chalkboard in the conference room, the list that had read like a manifesto. “The institute? A statue in Amdo town?”
An odd light began to shine in Tuan’s eyes. “Serenity,” he said in a tired voice. “Serenity is all I want.” He took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and held them under his nostrils as he had the time he met with Shan in the meeting room below. His sickness was in an advanced state, Shan realized. “The problem with everyone in Tibet is that they have been conditioned to settle for less. There are riches here, riches in the ground. Once we become the model, all things will be possible.”
We. He meant Khodrak and himself. He meant the district, his district, as a model of development. It was a dusty old paradigm, the use of an enterprise as a political model. The government would pour subsidies into such a model to guarantee its success, to create a propaganda model to demonstrate the correctness of its policies. More than a few of Beijing’s most conspicuous models had later proven to be shams, rife with corruption and forged production records. He recalled the photographers and monks posing with hammers, the pictures taken of Padme and his monks with the young shepherds in new clothes, the doctors with young Tibetan mothers. Tuan and Khodrak knew the game well. They had packaged everything, ignoring the truth, ignoring the rules of the Serenity Campaign even, but playing by rules Tuan had learned from a long career in the government and as a Party member. Their institute could quickly become a corporation, and with control of the leading economic enterprise in the region, they would rule a small kingdom.
“My partner arranged for Public Security to be told Chao’s killer had gone into Qinghai. That was risky. My former colleagues can be over-zealous.”
Shan stared at Tuan, trying to make sense not of his words, but of the man himself. He had once been one of those zealous knob officers, and retired. He had gone to seed and sprouted a new career, growing ever harder, more callous, more bitter. More sick. “Your partner is a busy man.”
Tuan gave an amused snort. “When you’re a thunderbolt you can move fast and strike hard.” It had the sound of a tired joke.
Shan clenched his jaw. Guru Dorje, the note had said. Guru Thunderbolt. It was Khodrak’s nickname. But Shan had seen the name on another piece of paper, scrawled at the top of the yellow slip Somo had found in Drakte’s boot, the compilation of data on Public Security soldiers. “Your partner was asking Chao for information on your payroll,” Shan observed, watching Tuan closely. Chao had not intended the payroll slip for Drakte. Perhaps he had it out, showing it to Drakte when the killer came, but the note was meant for Khodrak.
Director Tuan paused. He glared at Shan, not seeming to notice that the fax machine by the desk was humming, was receiving a fax, then looked out at the podium with a forced smile. Strangely, he looked back at his photograph of a lake cottage.
“I liked that Chao,” Tuan confessed airily. “He was the only one of my staff who told jokes. He could fix things when herders became uncooperative.” Tuan’s eyes narrowed. “I found him in that old stable, dead a few minutes, sliced open along his spine like a pig in a butcher shop. I thought the trail of blood was his at first, then I realized he would never have had the strength to rise from that wound. I sent my men to follow but they lost the trail in the mountains.”
Shan studied the Director, weighing his words. Tuan was saying, or at least trying to make Shan believe, that he was not the killer. “The one who ran may have not been the killer, he may have been a victim as well.”
Tuan shook his head. “We swept the town. Put up roadblocks, stopped all traffic for twenty-four hours. If the murderer had stayed in the town we would have had him.”
“You assume the murderer was someone you didn’t know.”
Tuan shrugged as if disinterested, then studied Shan with narrowed eyes. “I will finish it, I will close this matter myself. Chao was one of mine. It is for me to decide.” His words had the barest hint of an apology in them.
Something icy crept into Shan’s belly. “Reports have to get written for public executions. Someone in Lhasa will check. They expect evidence in the file.”
Tuan seemed disappointed, and he made a fluttering gesture with his hand that seemed to dismiss Shan’s suggestion. “After living in Tibet so many years you should know better,” he said in a mocking tone. “When you get selected for a government bullet in your skull it doesn’t have to be because you deserve it. It’s because you were always supposed to die that way.” A smug smile appeared on his face, as if he were very pleased with his wit. “It makes things so much easier for Public Security here.”
Shan returned his frigid stare. “The Tibetans also say that nothing happens in life that does not affect everything else.”
One side of Tuan’s mouth opened, exposing a tooth, with a silent snarl. He threw a pencil onto the desk. “The next few minutes will be the most important of your life. I will leave, and send a guard to stand at the door outside. If you try to run he will catch you and we will do things to your feet so you never run again. When the festivities are concluded we can begin anew here, but I will bring others to help. You’re not stupid. If you write the right confession before I return, I may decide to keep it and let you live, give you a job after all.” He pulled a piece of blank paper from the top drawer. Tuan’s tone was not cruel, but casual. He frowned at Shan, then stepped away, closing the office door behind him.
Shan stared at the door a moment, trying to understand the strange man. Nothing in his words had given Shan reason to change his view that Tuan was the killer. But Shan
had
changed his view. It had been in Tuan’s tone, his manner, the lack of anger or passion in his voice. He was too casual, too distracted, too weak, to be the one who stabbed Chao and Drakte. But, as the Tiger had suggested, Tuan could have laid a trap, could have stood by with his thin smile and ordered one of his men to do it.
Shan stirred from his thoughts and darted to the front window. Chairman Khodrak was shaking hands with Tenzin again, for the photographers. He ran to the window on the opposite side of the room, overlooking the courtyard between the buildings, and opened the sash. Nothing moved except the fluttering flags. The rope bearing the miniature Chinese flags was tied to an iron hook above the window. He pulled the rope, and pulled again, harder. He leaned out the window, pulling with both hands. The rope broke free of its fastening on the opposite building.
The sound of boots came from the corridor. He paused, ran to the wall behind the desk, grabbed the single page that now sat in the facsimile machine, ripped away the photograph of the serene cottage, then rushed back to the window. Stuffing the papers into his shirt he grabbed the now dangling line of flags and climbed out. A moment later he was on the ground.
The next instant Tenzin and his guard appeared around the corner of the building, moving toward the door of the second building. Shan stepped in behind them. As they reached the door two soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army appeared in front of them and reached out for Tenzin, pulling him between them.
“Religious Affairs matter,” the guard grunted.
“Not anymore,” one of the soldiers snapped. “This man is wanted for breach of military security. Orders of Colonel Lin.”
The guard looked back out the door as if hoping to see reinforcements. “Director Tuan has custody. Religious Affairs—”
“I said Colonel Lin,” the soldier said, and offered a sympathetic shrug. “We all just take orders, comrade. Take it up with your Director,” and turning, pushed Tenzin toward the stairs.
The guard hesitantly retreated, confusion obvious on his face. He turned and examined Shan suspiciously.
“Look at that,” Shan said in an impatient tone, and pointed to the downed line of flags. “And on May Day.” The guard glanced back inside, then at Shan and the broken line of flags, then muttered something under his breath and walked away.
A moment later Shan met Tenzin and the two purbas in uniform at the kitchen door and rushed them toward the meditation cells. Inside the old building, Shan helped Tenzin quickly trade his robe for the clothes of a dropka, then helped him into the hidden chamber as the purbas disappeared in the direction of the rear wall.
Winslow appeared to be asleep, but Lokesh was wide awake, squeezing Nyma’s hand affectionately, like an old uncle reunited with his family as they studied one of the ancient manuscripts. He looked up at Shan with his crooked grin, and Shan set his finger to his lips for fear the old man might cry out.
As Tenzin sat beside him Shan quietly explained that in a moment Khodrak and his men would discover that the holding room was empty. But when the knobs began to search the grounds, someone would call their attention to a strange scene on the ridge above, four men in army uniforms herding a man in a maroon robe up the ridge.
Tuan and Khodrak could not protest too loudly, for fear of being discredited in front of the officials from Lhasa. Even if Tuan pursued with his white shirts, he would arrive too late to find any trace of them on the far side of the ridge, for horses awaited the disguised purbas, which would quickly take them out of sight. He could not spread a wider alarm, because Tenzin was back where he was officially meant to be, in the custody of the army.
Then, as Khodrak and Tuan reeled in confusion Lhandro would announce the people of the region would pay homage to the gompa and its important visitors by staging their own celebration. The Tibetans’ long delayed spring festival would begin.
A whistle blew, and a moment later Shan heard boots pounding the earth outside. He settled back against the old wall. Once monks had hidden in here from Mongol invaders he told himself, bringing their most important thangkas and scriptures inside. The thought of the peche still lying on the shelves where they had been secreted, probably fifty years before, somehow comforted him. Treasures could still be hidden, and the arrogance of those who sought to usurp them could still be used as a weapon against them.
Shan watched the festival parade in his mind, as Lhandro had described it. In the front would be adorned yaks, all the yaks in the camp, which the dropka had finished decorating the night before. In the very front, festooned with red yarn and braids would be Jampa, led by Gyalo, the monk Khodrak had declared dead to Buddha, in a festival mask. Dropka in their traditional finery, some of it handed down for generations, would follow, some with hand drums and
damyen,
the traditional string instrument from the changtang. Then there would be dancers, adorned with some of the elaborate headdresses that had been used in
cham
dances, the dances traditionally performed to depict important historic or symbolic events. Finally, for good measure, children would lead their favorite sheep and dogs in the procession. It would be loud and chaotic, which was exactly what Shan and his friends had hoped for.