Soul of the Fire (33 page)

“What I believe doesn't matter.”

“What you believe matters most of all, Tuan. Otherwise, you are nothing, what the lamas call an empty vessel. If you truly thought that, you would have told Pao everything about Taktsang.”

“Maybe I did. Maybe I just lied to you.”

“No. From the first, I could see that in you. You don't lie. You tell partial truths. You have bound yourself to terrible people. But you don't lie and you never offer the secrets that would inflict the most damage on Tibetans. It's like Lokesh said, the seed of realization is trying to take root in you. You didn't want to leave that monastery all those years ago. You feel responsible for your friend's suicide.”

Tuan smirked. “Listen to you. Like some old lama. Next I'll have to call you Rinpoche.”

“What is the trap he is going to spring on Dawa?”

“Not hard to figure. Rallies can't be secret. When her followers start gathering, Pao will know. He'll be monitoring that phone so he can keep men within striking distance. He'll intercept her before it starts. Too embarrassing to let such gatherings proceed with foreigners nearby. You can warn them, but I doubt they will change their plans.”

“Is that what you want? For Dawa to be taken and executed?”

“Like I said, not my decision. I am not trusted with guns or decisions about where to aim them.” Tuan looked out into the night. “I wish she would just go away. Hide in some other province. I don't want her to be hurt.”

“It could be your decision,” Shan said.

Tuan frowned but did not look at Shan.

“You always have a choice. Just thinking about choices can tell a lot about someone.” Shan studied the Religious Affairs officer. “What will it be? Will you help Pao destroy Dawa, or will you help your mother, the famous poet nun?”

Tuan's face clouded. “She's dead.”

“No. That's the seed Lokesh speaks of. She lives inside you.”

He left Tuan staring into his tea and sought the night air, finding a bench in the dimly lit grove of bushes the town planners called a park. The small grey dog approached, sniffing warily. “Tonte,” he said, trying out the name. The terrier cocked its head at him, then curled up at Shan's feet. Shan had an uneasy feeling of being watched, of an intruder nearby, and he rose to discover a bust of Mao in a little alcove on the other side of the shrubs. He left and wandered onto the perimeter street that followed the town wall.

Except for the sound of the nightly garbage collection several blocks away, Zhongje seemed deserted. He walked alone in the orange glow of the sulfur streetlights. The town was not even three years old, but its cheaply constructed buildings showed the crumbling and decay of a city decades older. Shan knew Tibetans who shunned anything not made of wood, forged metal, wool, or leather, saying that everything that was plastic or stamped out in some factory was in fact not a real object. Zhongje was not a real town.

He heard steps behind him and nervously spun about to see Tonte padding along behind him. He let the dog catch up then continued, taking to the center of the empty street, letting his feet decide his route as he tried to focus on the impossible knot of mysteries. Something dark and terrible was coming, and his inability to grasp it gnawed like a worm at his heart. Everything he learned seemed to be a half truth, a piece of a larger secret. Deng may have been killed on Pao's orders, but the killing hands had been in Zhongje, they were not Sung's. Dawa was every bit the charismatic leader, but she cloaked herself in intrigue with foreigners. Dolma and Tserung let the world believe they were simple-minded old janitors while engaging in their own intrigue with the
purbas
which they would not share with Shan.

Shan paused by the municipal equipment lot, looking in despair at the bulldozer. He pressed on, lost in his forlorn musings, and found himself in the small warehouse district, where alleys littered with trash intersected the street between long storage buildings. A cold drizzle began to fall. He turned up his collar and kept walking.

The dog reacted first, uttering a low growl that caused Shan to turn in time to see the first of the hooded figures as it leapt out of the alley, swinging a club at his head. He twisted, and the club slammed into his shoulder. A second, larger figure, also in a hooded sweatshirt, aimed another blow, but Shan grabbed the club, a shovel handle, and rammed it backwards, striking the man's jaw so hard, it threw him off balance. He fell heavily, gasping, onto the pavement. The smaller assailant redoubled his efforts, gripping his own shovel handle in the center like a martial arts staff, pummeling Shan's chest and shoulders before landing a powerful blow behind his ear that dropped Shan to his knees.

The world began spinning. Shan grabbed the club and pulled, bringing his attacker closer. Suddenly the dog lunged, wrapping his jaw around a thin wrist.
“Cao!”
came the furious, high-pitched cry.
“Fuck!”
The figure ripped the club away and hammered the dog, which squealed in pain and limped away.

Both assailants towered over him, aiming their clubs as if for killing blows. Suddenly the wet buildings began to pulse. A flashing light was coming down the street, accompanied by a sputtering engine. The two figures in black were caught in the headlights for an instant, then disappeared into the alley. Shan was saved by the municipal garbage truck.

 

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Shan pounded on the locked door of the infirmary, then leaned against the wall, fighting another spell of dizziness before knocking again. When the door finally cracked open, Dr. Lam blocked it with her foot. “No! Not again!” she snapped. “I have half a dozen patients trying to sleep! You have to come back.…” Her words faded. Shan followed her gaze to the right shoulder of his shirt, which was soaked with blood. She opened the door and began reaching for his shoulder.

“Not me,” he said as he stepped inside, extending the dog. “I think his leg is broken.”

She took the dog but quickly laid it on the bed as they reached the examination room, then pulled at his shirt. Blood was trickling down his neck.

“Not me,” he repeated, pushing her hand away. “Him.”

She looked at Tonte and frowned. “Call the constables. They usually carry pistols. What he needs is a bullet.”

“Not this dog.”

“This is a sanitary facility. I have patients.”

“He saved my life.”

“I hate him already.”

“Please. I will pay.” As Shan took a step forward, the world began to spin. “I call him Tonte. I can…” He collapsed onto the floor.

He awoke in an infirmary bed, a hospital gown draped over his bare chest. His head throbbed. As he reached toward his ear, a firm hand pushed his arm down.

“Best not,” Lam said, and pried Shan's eyes wider, studying the pupils with her exam light. “Five sutures. No serious concussion, which only proves my theory that your head is solid granite. How much pain are you in?”

“Nothing except the drum pounding inside my skull.”

Lam gestured to two tablets and a glass of water on the bedside table. “You need to rest at least eight hours.”

As he swallowed the pills, Shan looked around the room.

“He's fine,” Lam reported. “Resting. A simple fracture. You're lucky my staff wasn't here, or I would have had to send him back to the street. Sleep. I'll wake you in the morning.”

“I didn't know if you would be here.”

“My staff is so nervous about the night shift, I agreed to cover for them. Sleep,” Lam said more insistently.

“Someone tried to kill me.”

“Just our luck,” Lam said as she pushed him back on the pillow and pulled up his blanket. “All the professionals in this town, and you draw the only amateurs.”

Shan stared after her, considering her words. If the knobs or
purbas
wanted him dead, they had had many chances to take him. Tan was attacked because Pao had decided not to move directly against Shan. He put his legs over the edge of the bed and slowly stood, steadying himself against the wall. When his head cleared, he stepped barefoot into the dimly lit hallway, passing a ward of sleeping patients before reaching a second ward where a single patient lay connected to an intravenous bag. On the far side of the bed was a wheeled table bearing a chess game in progress. The only movement was a grey tail wagging from the covers. He bent over Tonte, rubbing his head as he admired the tidy splint of tongue depressors on his front leg.

The long graceful hand of the patient was stretched out behind the dog. Her head was lost among the blankets but Shan recognized the bracelet of
dzi
beads on the wrist. Hannah Oglesby, a tube in her arm, had fallen asleep petting the dog.

His pain had subsided to a quiet throbbing by the time he returned to his quarters. He collapsed into the soft chair in the little sitting alcove, kicked his shoes into the shadows where his bed lay, and surrendered to his exhaustion.

Shan awoke abruptly, oddly short of breath, drained a bottle of water he had left on the table, and stumbled toward his bed. Something tangled around his foot. He reached for it, confused, then returned to the light and stared dumbly at it until suddenly his heart hammered him awake. He had tripped on a woman's bra.

He reached for the table lamp, but it wouldn't switch on, then he stepped backward to switch on the overhead light.

Miss Lin seemed more relaxed that he had ever seen her. Stretched out on his bed, mostly naked, she had a small, disbelieving grin frozen on her face. One hand was touching the necklace on her neck, the other extended over the sheet as if in invitation. The wrist was bloody, showing tooth marks. Her eyes were wide open and bulging. It wasn't a necklace. It was the electric cord torn from the lamp, wound so tightly around her neck it had cut into the flesh.

*   *   *

Major Sung was furious at being awakened at 3
A.M.,
even more so when Shan would say nothing other than “You have to come.”

They walked in silence up the stairs and down the corridor to Shan's quarters. He led Sung inside and told him to wait by the entry as he switched on the light over the bed.

The color drained from Sung's face as he saw Lin. “Fuck me!” he groaned. “What have you done?” He stepped forward, extending a hand toward the woman as if to take her pulse, then reconsidered as he saw her lifeless eyes.

“I was with Pao, then in the dining room with Tuan and Judson. Afterwards, I went for a walk. Somewhere near the warehouses, two people wearing hoods tried to kill me. There was a dog with me who bit the smaller one on the wrist,” he said, pointing to Lin's hand. “I went to the infirmary, where Dr. Lam stitched my head. All those witnesses and the street cameras will confirm it. Look at her. Her neck and shoulders are in rigor mortis. Turn her and you'll see the lividity on her side. She's been dead at least four hours. I was in the infirmary then. When they couldn't stop me on the street, they came back here to finish the job. But her accomplice panicked, or decided he had a better way of getting rid of me.” Shan studied the bed with a steadier eye. A black sweatshirt lay in a heap against the wall. Two small athletic shoes lay where they had been tossed in the corner, beside a pale yellow blouse. “Perhaps encouraged,” Shan whispered, more to himself than to Sung, “by some urge to kill attractive young women.”

Sung lifted Lin's outstretched hand and grimaced as it limply fell to the bed. “You're not dragging me into this,” he said in a hollow voice.

“I could have called Tuan. I could have called Choi. You fail to recognize the favor I am doing you.”

“A favor like a bullet in the head.”

“Lin worked for Public Security. If she didn't, then go use the phone by the elevator. Call the local police and have them arrest me.”

Sung winced but did not argue. The major took a step closer to the body. “She was too young for undercover work. But in Lhasa, she slept with every Party official still capable of getting an erection. This was a test. Pao told her she was destined for glory at embassies in the West, that the Party would rejoice when foreign officials were trapped in bed with a young Chinese diplomat.”

Pao's little girl.
The Deputy Secretary threatened to send a little girl to deal with Xie. He had meant Lin. “You recognized her in that photo at Tan's hospital.”

“It seemed possible, yes. She had been in nurses' school when a Public Security talent scout discovered her.”

Shan bent and lifted the sweatshirt. “We shouldn't leave her like that,” he said in a tight voice.

“But the investigators—,” Sung began.

“We both know there will be no investigation.”

They didn't speak as they awkwardly lifted Lin up and pulled the sweatshirt over her naked torso.

“You are not going to drag me into your conspiracies.”

“I can call the constables myself,” Shan offered. “When they interrogate me, I will explain that Lin tried to kill me earlier in the evening. The bite on her wrist proves it. I would have them go to her room, where they would find her Public Security credentials. A Public Security officer attempting the murder of a Commission member. It would upset everything, in a very public way.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to upset everything in a private way. Disband the Commission. Immediately. Get the foreigners out.”

A small growling noise came from Sung's throat. “You've become Xie. You're delusional. What you ask is impossible. Pao would never allow it. He nearly has Dawa in his grasp already.”

“Do it or all the evidence goes to Dawa. Deng's murder.”

“And Pao will produce evidence that Deng was killed by the
purbas
.”

Shan ignored him. “Xie's murder. The attempt on Colonel Tan's life. Those alone will put a rift between the army and the Party that will take years to repair. With that evidence in her hands, Dawa will change her plans.”