Soul of the Fire (12 page)

“My friend?” Shan looked in alarm toward the square.

“A man threw a bucket of water on him and thrashed him with a stick until one of the old mothers stopped him. But she won't be able to stop the others. Take him away. He does not belong here.”

Shan turned and ran, then halted at the corner of the square. Tuan was at the pump, soaking wet, bleeding from cuts on his face and hands, but filling a bucket for a young boy. Several old Tibetans stood near him, softly laughing. A middle-aged man in the clothes of a farmer stood in the street, glaring at the outsider, a shovel in his hands. As Shan watched two more men appeared, holding uplifted pitchforks. The farmer cursed, marched to the pump, and kicked the bucket from Tuan's hand, then pointed with his shovel toward the road out of town. Tuan began filling another bucket. The farmer began shouting angrily at him.

Shan took a step closer, eyeing the approaching men uneasily.

Tuan raised his palms as though to stop the men, then lifted the bucket and poured it over his own head. The boy and the old Tibetans howled with laughter. The others were not amused. One man raised his pitchfork.

Shan shot forward and pulled Tuan away.

As they reached the top of the rise outside the village, Tuan paused to look back. “You might have told me you were going to abandon me,” he said forlornly.

“I came back. You could have just gone back to Zhongje. That's all they wanted.”

Tuan cursed, then shook more water from his hair and hurried forward. As they reached the end of the narrow gully that led up the mountain, a tangled knot of loose brush tumbled by and disappeared over the cliff. The wind was gusting around the fangs, raising an eerie moan from the cracks in the formations. Tuan, still wearing Shan's
gau,
clutched it in one hand and grabbed Shan's arm with the other as if suddenly weak. He watched the edge of the cliff nervously as Shan helped him across.

On the other side, Tuan took off his shirt and began wringing the water out of it. “When that man in the café starting serving buttered tea, I told him how terrible it was for his body. All that fat and salt. I was speaking in Chinese. You know, like a joke, like some of those stupid public health commercials they have on television. I didn't think anyone understood. But one of those men did, and translated for the others.”

Shan looked back at the village. Yamdrok was one of the strangest communities he had ever experienced in Tibet. A mile from the prison, less than that from a brigade of officials in Zhongje, the village openly practiced defiance of the Chinese. Stranger still, it was allowed its defiance.

Tuan removed Shan's
gau
only after they had reached the wall at Zhongje. “One of those men shouted out that I was destined to be eaten by the wind fangs, that I would enjoy the view before I hit the rock spears below. I think they were considering throwing me over.”

Shan did not take the amulet as Tuan extended it. “I want to see those videos.”

“Videos?”

“The surveillance videos from the day Commissioner Xie died. Nearly a dozen people were present. Surely showing me the videos would be less disruptive than having me interview them all.”

“You never stop!” Tuan spat. “You know you would never be allowed access.”

“Access is a relative term, comrade.”

“Sung would never approve.”

“He would never approve of you giving me the photos in my file that first day.”

Tuan quickly looked toward the town gate, as if someone might overhear. “You don't know they came from me.”

“I do now. Sung never would have done it. Choi and Zhu might have known about the surveillance but never would risk interfering with Sung's work. The foreigners likely don't suspect there are cameras. Who else could it be? You are the one who provided my file.”

“Why would I put in photos?”

“Because you didn't know about Lokesh when I mentioned him.”

“You mean your friend in Longtou?”

“That was Sung's leverage against me. But you wanted leverage too.”

“Me?”

“It was insurance. They would scare me, maybe assure I was submissive. But more important, possession of such photos would be evidence enough to throw me off the Commission if I proved troublesome. You never thought I would actually act on them.”

“You overestimate me, comrade.”

Shan remembered the casual, almost disinterested way Tuan behaved around the Public Security officer and finally saw the answer in Tuan's challenging gaze. “Everyone who works for the government kowtows to Sung. Except you. You treat a much older, hard-bitten knob officer like an equal. You work for Pao. Pao wanted the leverage.” He pressed his point. “I want to see the videos.”

“If Sung found out, he would be furious.”

“More furious than if I told him you had leaked his secret photos to me?”

Tuan winced.

“The camera does not lie. It offers only facts,” Shan stated. “Surely the motherland is not afraid of the truth.”

Tuan muttered a curse under his breath and shoved the
gau
back at Shan. “I have a computer in my quarters.”

A quarter hour later, they sat in a room that matched Shan's own, looking at a computer screen as Tuan searched for the images of Xie's death.

“I need your phone while you do that,” Shan said.

“No way.”

“One call. To the Governor of Lhadrung County.”

Tuan rolled his eyes. “You never stop,” he groused again, but extracted his phone from his pocket.

The call was answered on the second ring by one of Colonel Tan's staff officers. “I need to speak with the colonel,” Shan said.

“Not available.”

“This is Shan Tao Yun.”

Most of the officers knew Shan, and most of those despised him. The officer took a long time to answer. “On medical leave. In Lhasa. Could be a month or more,” the man said, then hung up.

Shan had no time to consider the news, for Commissioner Xie was now on Tuan's screen. He watched as Xie rested his head on his hands as if about to nap. Madam Choi raised a file, gesturing to the two stacks in front of her. Although the video had no soundtrack, he could imagine her well-rehearsed introduction of yet another case. Less than a minute later, Xie seemed to shudder, then, his eyes still open, his head slid along his arm onto the table. Tuan played the video again, in slow motion and fast forward. Drowsy. Shudder. Death. There seemed to be nothing more, no unexpected movement from those around him. Kolsang on one side and Vogel on the other did nothing but turn the pages in the files before them until jumping up in alarm when Zhu pointed at Xie, just before Xie's head hit the table.

“Who would want him dead?” Shan abruptly asked.

Tuan hesitated a moment too long. “Don't be ridiculous. He had a heart attack. It was his time.”

Shan looked up, trying to understand what he had seen. On a shelf above Tuan's computer were postcards and figures that looked like souvenirs. A porcelain panda, a plastic woman in a grass skirt, a ceramic Buddha, a die-cast sports car, and a plastic figure of the red-suited Westerner called Santa Claus. “Whom did he argue with?”

“It wasn't like that.”

Tuan looked longingly toward the door as if thinking of bolting from his own room. Shan put a hand on his arm. “Whom did he disagree with?”

“Madam Choi was frustrated with him. He asked more questions than anyone else about the files. He wanted direct interviews with the families of victims. Sometimes Kolsang joined him in the arguments. She said the Commissioners were inexperienced at processing and assessing evidence, that that was the job of Public Security experts, who used all the modern techniques. She said he impeded efficient processing of the cases.”

“Was there a confrontation?”

“More like a self-criticism session, just among the Chinese members. She said he was embarrassing the motherland. He said we must look beyond the papers.”

“Beyond the papers?”

Tuan shrugged. “He reminded her that the Commission had to take a vote to support its final recommendations she seemed to take it like a threat.”

“When was that?”

“Two days before—” Tuan gestured to the screen. “—before this.”

“And the next day?”

“He and Kolsang were silent until after the session. Only the Americans asked questions.”

Shan stared in frustration at the screen. “Take it back five minutes.” They tried five minutes earlier, then another five, then Shan had Tuan play the session from its start, at high speed.

The pattern was identical to the meetings Shan had attended. Miss Lin and the other attendants straightened the chamber and set up cups and thermoses with tea. Madam Choi and Administrator Deng arrived, followed a few minutes later by Kolsang and Zhu, then Tuan escorted in the Western members. Sung appeared and sat in his usual chair at the wall. Shan took over the computer and replayed the events, trying to understand what nagged him.

“Sung,” he suddenly said. “He was Administrator Deng's replacement. Except the Administrator didn't leave until three days after Xie died.”

Tuan stared at the screen with an uncertain expression. “Sung is a major of Public Security. He probably had business in Zhongje. He can go wherever he wishes.”

“He wished to sit in a dull Commission meeting?”

“There're foreigners involved.” Tuan seemed to reconsider his words and cast an awkward glance at Shan.

“There're foreigners involved,” Shan echoed. The Commission was all about the foreigners. The government was performing for the foreigners, though he still wasn't sure whom the foreigners were performing for.

“There—” Shan said, pointing to the screen. “Lin pours two cups of tea and gives them to Deng. But first she turns.” He backed up the video. “Watch carefully,” he said to Tuan. Lin poured the two cups, then set them down and turned her back to the camera for several seconds, obscuring the cups. She then handed one cup to Deng, nodding at him, hesitating before extending the second to his right hand. “Why one cup at a time?” Shan asked. “Why nod like that? She knew about the cameras and deliberately turned so as not to be seen, but only for seconds.” They watched as Deng sat beside Xie, pushing the cup in his left hand toward him before leaning over to speak and lifting his own cup as if in salute.

“Just a gesture of goodwill,” Tuan offered. “Xie and Deng had argued the day before, after the Commission adjourned.”

“Argued?”

“Just like the argument with Choi. Xie kept insisting they were moving too fast, that to be objective they needed to hear other evidence, not files prepared by the same Public Security investigators in every case. Kolsang joined in, taking Xie's side.”

“But Kolsang never says anything.”

“He did before Xie died. They argued with Deng. At the end, Deng seemed strangely sad. He said think of the consequences, then he begged Xie to stop, but Xie said it was his duty not to stop.”

Shan advanced the tape. The meeting started. Deng left the room, but Sung stayed in his chair along the wall, watching Xie. Several files were reviewed, but the major kept watching Xie, who seemed to have a heated discussion with Madam Choi over one particular file. Choi closed the file in front of her. Then Tuan on the tape leaned over his chair, hanging his head toward the floor. Xie drank his tea, cradled his head, and died. “It was the tea. Lin put something in the tea, and Deng delivered it. Then Deng was killed.”

Tuan's head snapped up. “Ridiculous. He is on family leave. An emergency at home. You want to see crimes everywhere,” he said. “It's a sickness you have. A psychological condition.” There was no protest in his voice, only fatigue.

Shan replayed the tape. While Choi and Xie had argued, Tuan seemed forlorn. “What was the file they argued over?”

“Commissioners don't argue. They clarify.”

“You were there. What was the file?”

Tuan grew strangely quiet. “Another dead monk.”

Shan took a piece of paper from his pocket, the list of burn victims he had taken from the hospital databases. “Check that list against current databases. One will be missing. Tell me what name it is.”

Tuan nodded but did not take his eyes off the screen. “He drank the gasoline before dousing himself with it.”

Shan studied Tuan, surprised not at the words but the whisper with which they were spoken. He played back the video, watching Tuan's image again. “You kept looking at the floor when they discussed that last file. You were troubled.” He looked at the little Buddha on the shelf. “What was the monk's name?”

“Why would I—?” Tuan saw the challenge in Shan's eyes and then looked at the Buddha himself. “Togme was his name. I told you. We are encouraged to experience life in a monastery as part of our training. Like a secondment”

“My God. You knew him.”

“He was the monk assigned to me. We studied together. We became friends. He was allowed time off with me, and we visited some old shrines. He would go out with me and let me drink. He would never drink. He said I was one of those who would never grasp the evils of the world without participating in them.”

Shan was not sure he understood. “You mean you asked to go to the
gompa
?”

“The Bureau was pleased that I volunteered, said it showed patriotic commitment to endure such a sacrifice for the motherland. My mother was still alive, but very sick. I thought it would cheer her up. She said I had a destiny with the monks, that she was going to die happy. She did die that year, thinking I was going to become a monk after all.” Tuan looked up with a melancholy smile, and it seemed to Shan in that moment he was just another confused Tibetan youth. “I memorized a dozen sutras. Togme said I was the best student he had ever seen, that if I gave it another year, I could sit for the exams. He said I had been a novice monk all my life and never known it. I never understood what he meant by that.”