Soul of the Fire (20 page)

Shan tapped the plastic Buddha again, and Tuan seemed to relax. “I was there when Pao came out of the conference call with Beijing in which the formation of the Commission was approved.”

“Who was the first foreign commissioner?”

“Even before the official approval, Pao was on the phone, talking to Vogel in Germany late one night. I heard them laughing about the women in Hamburg. Pao knows his weaknesses: women and alcohol.”

“When the foreigners arrived, what happened? Were they escorted from the airport?”

Tuan gave a little whoop as the car lurched over a rut. “Of course. They were VIPs. They had to have time to adjust, so they were given three days to relax and shop. Tend to arrangements.”

“What arrangements?”

“Travel details. Personal items. Medicines. Judson had to find a bottle of bourbon. Oglesby had to go to the consulate because she had lost her passport. Had to get a new photo and temporary papers.”

“You went with her?”

“No need. She hopped a taxi, came back in a couple hours. Took longer to find that damned bourbon. Then we had those publicity shots and an opening banquet. Pao gave a speech. Handshakes. Toasts. Flagwaving.”

“And Choi had been there, preparing the files?”

Tuan gave an amused snort. “Choi was ready to graciously accept the files from Deng. Lin and Zhu had a hand as well. Pao convened the administrative team a month before the Commission arrived. Choi just—” Tuan's words died as they rounded a sharp bend and the large stone stable came into view. He slammed on the brakes and the car skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust. “You tricked me.”

“No. I said there was a secret about the cases we needed to understand.”

Tuan was sour, and growing angry. “I thought you meant your secret.”

“You know what this place is?” Shan asked as he counted half a dozen black vehicles by the two-story building.

“Of course not. It doesn't work that way with Public Security. I tell them things. They tell me nothing. Safer that way.” As he put the car in reverse, Shan grabbed his arm.

“You are my handler. I can get out of the car and go on alone without my handler. Of course, they will report it to the major, who will demand to know why once again you weren't doing your job.”

“I don't think we are supposed to be—”

“You are not a policeman. You are just the eyes and ears, a watcher. Did anyone actually tell you to restrict my movements?”

Tuan frowned. “No.”

“Exactly. Now, either come with me or you can spend hours with Sung and his men trying to explain why it happened, and how you came to be so negligent as to leave me alone again.”

Tuan gripped the wheel tightly and stared at the dashboard. “I don't want to see this.”

“I keep thinking about what your friend Togme told you before he killed himself. You have a novice monk inside you, but before he can emerge, you have to participate in the evils of the world. Everyone has a different path to enlightment, Tuan.”

Tuan's hands dropped from the wheel.

Alone with one or two knobs, Shan and Tuan would be scrutinized, at least instantly noticed. Mingling with two dozen of them, half in civilian clothes, they escaped everyone's attention. He was shamed at fitting in so easily, knowing his many years with the lamas had not entirely erased the glint of the Beijing inspector from his countenance. He marched through the door straight to a table set with thermoses and plates of biscuits at the side of the entry, then quickly poured two cups of tea, handing one to Tuan before casually looking about.

The building was the largest stable Shan had ever seen in Tibet, though such structures were probably common once in the dependencies of huge
gompas
like Sungpa. The ground level, except for side storerooms being used as offices by Public Security, consisted of empty stalls on either side of a wide central aisle, now in deep shadow. Even after all the years, they still gave off a stench of manure. Above each row of stalls was a loft running the full length of the building, where fodder would once have been stored for the animals.

Now the lofts stored Tibetans.

Men and women of all ages, even small children, gazed down with hollow, forlorn eyes. Their clothing was tattered and soiled. At the base of the steep ladder stairs that led up to each loft stood a uniformed guard with an automatic rifle.

Tuan leaned close to Shan's ear. “We have to go,” he pleaded. He looked as skittish as the Tibetans.

“Why would they be here?” he asked, more to himself than Tuan.

As if in answer, the door to the nearest storeroom opened and a middle-aged woman in the heavy felt dress and apron of traditional Tibet was shoved out. She did not look up as she was led by a guard toward the nearest stair. In her hand was the ruin of an ornate
gau,
smashed nearly flat. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

An officer appeared in the doorway and snapped a command. Naked lightbulbs suddenly illuminated the aisle. One of the knobs picked up a clipboard from a table stacked with files and marched down the row of lightbulbs. He paused after a dozen steps and barked into the shadows. The stalls were not empty. The manure Shan smelled was fresh, and not from yaks or goats. Dim faces began to appear, rising up out of the gloom. Every stall held more Tibetan prisoners.

The knob shouted again, and a Tibetan man in tattered clothing raised an arm, which the knob seized to drag him into the aisle. Shan could not bear to look the man in the face as he was pulled past them into the interrogation room—his hand shook as he lowered his cup to the table.

He gazed up at the silent, tormented faces above, then pushed down his emotion and stepped to the pile of files. Lifting the topmost, he handed it to Tuan. “Walk at my shoulder and read it to me,” he ordered his companion, who looked as if he were about to flee. “Now,” he growled, then gestured him toward the aisle.

They paced along the stalls as Tuan read, looking like one more officer with his assistant. Six to ten Tibetans were crowded into each stall with nothing but old, soiled straw for bedding. Where the light reached the back walls, Shan saw crude drawings of sacred symbols. Halfway down the aisle, he stepped into a stall. The Tibetans inside retreated in fear until their bodies pressed against the crumbling plaster of the back wall. Farther down the corridor came a low murmuring chorus, almost like the rustle of grass in the wind. Unseen prisoners were whispering mantras.

Shan's hands searched his pockets. He extended a roll of candy to an old man in the fleece vest of a shepherd, who turned and handed it to one of the children pressing against the back wall. The boy who took it looked at him in fear. Shan pulled out the
gau
that was inside his shirt.
“Lha gyal lo,”
he murmured. The boy opened the candy.

“There's a tray of biscuits by the tea,” Shan said to Tuan. “Bring some back here.” As Tuan backed away, Shan handed his handkerchief to an old woman, then bent, removed his shoes and socks, and handed the socks to the old shepherd. “Are you families of Longtou prisoners?” he ventured, in Tibetan now.

“Families of the dead,” the old man replied.

“The dead?”

“Maybe only Agni understands.”

Shan hesitated. “You mean the fire god?”

The Tibetan nodded. Three of the others in the stall relaxed, sitting down to return to their task, reciting mantras.

“We are all connected by Agni,” the old Tibetan said.

The realization came like an icy grip on his heart. He remembered Tenzin the witness, so well prepared, so terrified when Sung had brought him to the Commission. “You mean you all knew someone who immolated themselves. They interrogate you about the suicides?”

“We have not been questioned yet. They don't come every day. And at night, they just have the guards at the front. We talk to those upstairs. In those old storerooms, they are interrogated about the family of the dead. About work units. My grandson shook off the torment of this life with the help of the fire god. If I had known, I would have tried to take his place.”

Shan looked at the upturned, frightened faces in the stalls. “They question you then take you upstairs?”

“They have statements prepared for those who are questioned. Those who sign what they want are taken away. The knobs say they just go home.”

“What kind of statements?”

The old man's bitter grin showed several teeth missing. “They are in Chinese. Not many of us read Chinese.”

“There was a man named Tenzin.”

The Tibetan nodded. “They gave him some clean clothes and took him away.”

“And if you don't sign?”

“Every few days, a bus comes to take the ones upstairs to prison.”

Shan shuddered. The stable was Pao's evidence factory. He had been unable to understand how the Commission staff always had such perfect evidence, how Sung was able to answer nearly every question from the Commissioners with a statement or affidavit the next day. He looked back down the row of stalls. It seemed quite bold, even risky, to have such an operation so close to Zhongje. But the entire enterprise was under Deputy Secretary Pao, who could do no wrong. He would want everything out of sight but within reach, close to his office in Lhasa but closer to the Commission.

“Everyone here is family to one of the victims?”

“Family, neighbors, friends. Confessors.”

“Confessors?”

“Some are just from monasteries and convents, monks and nuns who had spoken with the burnt ones.”

Confessors. Shan quickly took the man's hand in both of his, then remembered the little
tsa tsa
in his shirt pocket and placed it in the man's leathery palm before stepping away. Tuan returned, extending the biscuits one by one, awkwardly nodding as the Tibetans murmured effusive thanks. Shan continued down the aisle.

“Yosen?” he called in a loud whisper. “Pema? It's Shan.”

There was movement in a stall at the end of the aisle, opposite the night soil buckets used by the prisoners. A familiar face peered over the half wall. Shan quickly entered the stall and pulled Yosen down to kneel in the straw.

“You've been here since that day we were picked up?” he asked.

The young nun nodded. She seemed not to have been harmed, and now wore tattered clothing over her robe. “Some days they don't even interrogate, just throw us food and leave us alone.” She saw the worry in Shan's eyes. “It was intended by the gods that we be here,” she assured him. “There are many here who need our help. Many don't know about the poems left by their loved ones, but when we recite the words to them, it helps ease their pain.” The nun glanced nervously in the direction of the knobs. “Do you have a pencil?” she asked. “Mine is worn out.”

Shan gave her the pencil in his pocket, and was about to ask why she needed it when he noticed the walls of her stall. They were covered with mantras, thousands of tiny mantras. He handed her his pen as well. “Pema?” he asked.

Yosen beckoned into the deeper shadows, and the older woman came forward. “They have not struck us, Friend Shan,” she said. “And we are out of the weather. The gods still watch over us.”

“There's not much time,” Shan said. “Tell everyone to trade identity papers, say that those who arrested you took them and then gave them back to the wrong people. It will delay things.”

Yosen smiled serenely. “We ate ours.”

Shan looked at her, stunned. “Surely you didn't,” he said. “They will lock you away just for that.”

“Better for that,” the nun said, then fell silent as Tuan approached.

“Please,” the Religious Affairs officer pleaded to Shan. “Much longer and they will put us in a stall.”

Shan stood. “Do you have a pencil?”

Tuan gestured to his pocket, where three pens jutted out. Without asking, Shan grabbed them and handed all three to Pema, who reached for them with a smile.

Shan froze, staring at her hand.

The older nun followed his gaze, then gasped and pulled her hand back into the shadows.

The motion had been quick but not quick enough. Pema's hand was missing its index finger. Yosen stepped in front of the older woman and reached for the pens. Shan did not release them for a moment. “I'll meet you at the door,” he told Tuan, and did not turn back to the nun until he was halfway down the aisle.

“They search for Dawa,” he said. “She must be warned. You must know where she is.”

“Dawa is favored by the gods,” Yosen replied, a tone of defiance entering her voice.

“Does she have family here?”

“Her blessed father died.”

Shan did not understand. “Is she near here?”

“Her blessed father died,” Yosen repeated, then retreated into the shadows.

For the entire drive back, Shan replayed the conversation over in his mind, then reconsidered his trip in the meat wagon with the nuns. Pema had always kept her left hand out of sight. The knobs had picked them up for merely knowing an immolation victim. Public Security was not aware that two of the three most sought after targets of Pao's campaign against the
purbas
were already in their custody. Yet Yosen and Pema had shown no fear in the stable, and in fact seemed savvy about dealing with the knobs. If Pema could keep her hand concealed, their interrogators may well become so angry over their lack of identity papers that they would ship them off for a few months internment without further questions. If not, they would be savaged in interrogation and sent away for years, or worse.

*   *   *

As they returned the truck to the municipal garage, Tuan saw several workers washing the town fire truck and hesitated. He made Shan promise to go straight to the Commission meeting, then trotted over to the truck. Shan went to the infirmary.

The first nurse who spied him abruptly halted and spun about toward Lam's office. He hurried to the side door of the intensive care chamber and was staring at its empty bed when Lam reached him.