Soul of the Fire (36 page)

They were kneeling at a little makeshift altar when he entered. “You have to stop whatever it is you are doing,” he said to their backs. “It's not worth his life!” He felt strangely out of breath. All the emotion that had dammed up inside since seeing the severed card finally broke through. “He is the only person who can make me laugh! He makes me want to live! He makes Tibetans want to live!”

Judson fixed him with wide, worried eyes. Shan hated the frightened, desperate person he had become. “Lokesh is like the last of an ancient species nearing extinction,” Shan said in a steadier voice. “Don't let him end it like this.”

“Shan, please,” Judson said. “You're scaring me. I don't know what you are talking about.”

“What he is talking about,” said the woman beside him, “is this.” She turned. It wasn't Hannah beside Judson. Dawa held up the other half of Lokesh's identity card.

Judson paled. “Jesus. No,” he groaned. “Not Lokesh.”

Shan pulled out the other half of the card. “For years, he and I have gone all over Tibet seeking out old books and artifacts, hiding them for another generation, like the ancient lamas hid treasures hundreds of years ago for pilgrims to find. We put precious Buddha images and old
peches
in caves deep in the mountains, and he would seal them with special prayers. We would go in the night to old
chortens
being dismantled to save the relics inside. But I came to realize that Lokesh himself was the real treasure. He may be the last survivor of the Dalai Lama's government before the occupation.”

Dawa gazed forlornly at the piece of plastic in her hand. “How can we not respect the decision of such a man?”

“You make it too easy for him to die.”

Shan's words seemed to stab deep. Dawa bit her lip and was silent a long moment, then reached around her neck and pulled away a strap. Shan expected to see a gau, but instead it held a drawstring pouch. “Too easy?” The sturdy
purba
leader suddenly looked frail. She upended the pouch on the little stool beside the altar. “This is the opposite of easy.”

Dozens of severed identity cards fell out on the stool. “We have never decided for any of them. I have never not tried to convince them to stop, to find another way to express their commitment to a new Tibet.” Her voice cracked as she spoke, and she had to pause to collect herself. “I met every single one who came with these cards. Every night I try to remember each of their faces before I go to sleep. There was a farmer in Kham named Jigme. ‘If this is the end of time,' he said, ‘then I should be able to decide how to end my time.'”

Shan saw the tracks on her cheeks. She had been crying before he came, at the altar. “Would you do this, offer yourself to the fire god?”

A melancholy smile rose on Dawa's face. “There is nothing I would not do for our cause. There are many ways to die,” she added almost in a whisper.

As Shan tried to make sense of her last words, a shadow fell across the entry. Hannah Oglesby took a step inside, then froze as she saw Shan. A bandage was taped across her left temple, where the knob had struck her. When she saw the identity cards on the stool, she lowered her head and retreated a step.

“Shan came to join us, Hannah,” Judson said. “We were—” He glanced at Dawa. “—speaking about gods again.”

Shan picked up one of the card fragments, then another. He saw names he recognized from the Commission files. Dorje Chugta the young nun, Korchok Gyal the forest warden, Kyal Gyari, and many others. The reports in the files had been sterile, impersonal accounts filtered by Public Security. The cards made the dead real. Here were living men and women who had dedicated all that they were, and all that they ever would be, to the fiery god of freedom.

“You can still run,” Shan said to Dawa.

The dissident silently shook her head.

“I have another way to end what Pao is doing. You don't have to turn yourself in. Lokesh doesn't have to die.”

Dawa began gathering up the cards. “Having the Commission succeed is bad enough. But when it does, Pao will gain absolute power. He is the demon who has been lurking on our horizon for years. He will be the end of Tibet. He will consume it like a ravenous animal.”

Shan rose, painfully aware that if he was absent too long, Tuan would start looking for him. He glanced at Hannah. She hadn't retreated, she had closed the door and moved to a pile of blankets next to it, as if guarding it the heap. “Pao is a practical man,” he tried. “He may make a deal.”

“Exactly. He must be given something he wants even more than a successful Commission,” Dawa said. “There is only one thing he wants more. Me.”

“He'll torture you.”

“Living in Pao's Tibet is already torture.”

Shan took a quick step past Hannah, then turned and pulled up the blankets. Underneath were four large metal cans with spouts. Each was marked, in English and Chinese, with the words
AVIATION FUEL.

“Shan, no,” Dawa said, pleading in her voice now. “It is not for us to change decisions made in the hearts of others. Some are convinced of the need to keep the protests alive.”

Before he could react, the latch on the door lifted. Judson sprang forward to cover the cans as the door opened.

“Oh!” Tuan exclaimed to the American. “I was looking for Shan. One of the constables saw him come this way.” He nodded awkwardly at Judson and Hannah, then froze as he saw Dawa. He backed up, looking down now. “I didn't see anything,” he said. “No one but Shan. No one,” he repeated in a worried voice. “I only wanted a quiet place to talk with Shan. There's news.”

“News?” Shan asked. He glanced in alarm at Dawa.

“The son of Ani Jinpa can always speak freely with all of us,” the
purba
leader said.

Tuan retreated a step outside. “A development, you might say. Pao gave me a draft speech to review.” He turned away from the door as if uncomfortable speaking to the others. “He's very excited about it. A new campaign, all his own idea. ‘Fertilize the Motherland,' he wants to call it. No one is to know until he announces it next week in Lhasa.” Dawa stepped in front of him. He glanced at her again, then looked down, wringing his hands. “It's the end of Tibet,” he said in an agonized whisper.

It was Dawa who broke the silence. “Tell us, Tuan. Tell us everything.”

“Reverse immigration is how he describes it, a mirror image of the days when they moved entire city blocks of Chinese from the east by truck convoy into Tibet.” He looked toward Zhongje as he continued, as if he could not bear to look at any of them. “He means to ship entire Tibetan towns to factory cities in the east. Tens of thousands of people. He has a map of every protest, every immolation site. Every Tibetan within five miles of each site is to be shipped east.” Tuan's voice tightened as he spoke. He seemed short of breath. “They could do it,” he said, this time with a glance at Shan. “The new train will make it possible. He says it's all just a matter of logistics.”

No one spoke. Hannah raised a hand to her belly as if the news had physically struck her, and slowly settled onto her knees in front of the makeshift altar. She looked like one more anguished nun.

Tuan suddenly looked up at Dawa. “You should go. Please go. They are tracking your phone.”

The
purba
leader looked at him in surprise, contemplating the troubled Religious Affairs officer for several long breaths. “I will not run, Tuan,” she said at last, then fixed Shan with a long, pointed gaze before turning back toward Tuan. “But I would like to make you Pao's hero.”

*   *   *

The Commission meeting that morning was abruptly canceled after Tuan entered and urgently conferred with Major Sung and Madam Choi. An hour later, Sung and Choi waited at an outdoor table of the little street café, staring at an empty chair. Plainsclothes knobs were in the café and in the shadows of the adjoining buildings. The appointed time came, and no one filled the chair. Shan waited ten more minutes, Dawa's words echoing in his mind. She had taken him aside and spoken with him after Tuan headed back up the slope. “I ask of you the most difficult thing of all, Shan,” she said. “I ask you to do nothing, only deliver a message.” Finally he emerged into the sunlight and took the chair.

“No!” Choi barked, and urgently motioned Shan away. “We are expecting someone!”

Shan only stared at Sung.

The major muttered under his breath, then raised a palm toward Choi. “The
purbas
' representative is here, Madam Chairman.”

Choi's mouth opened and shut without a sound. “You!” she finally spat.

“I am the ghost Commissioner,” Shan reminded her. “The one who represents the neglected.”

Choi struggled to contain her fury.

Sung lit a cigarette and leaned forward. “What do they want?”

“The stable must be shut down and all its prisoners released. There shall be no reprisals on Yamdrok or its people. The Commission must be disbanded, its foreign members sent out of the country immediately. There are international flights to Singapore and New Delhi leaving early tomorrow morning.”

“Nonsense!” Choi snapped. “We do not bend to the demands of traitors!”

Sung ignored her. “In exchange for what?”

“Dawa. She will surrender when she has confirmation the foreign commissioners are in the air.”

“Pao will never forgive you, Shan. Whether or not he accepts, he will have your head.”

“He will accept. This gives him a bigger victory than any he might have expected from the Commission. And the Commission's outcome is still far from certain. The Americans can be so unpredictable.”

“Is that all?”

“One more thing. I want Tuan out of it, not involved in any way. You know how spies stir up ill will.”

Two hours later, the Commission was convened for the announcement that its services were no longer required. Vogel, who still seemed in an alcoholic haze, was booked on a flight to Singapore with a connection to Germany. The Americans would fly to New Delhi, where medical experts could treat Hannah for her altitude sickness. Choi announced that there would be no time for an official banquet, but certificates of appreciation would be sent to each of them.

A grim-faced Judson met Shan in the corridor as he stared at the German, who was speaking with Choi. “It isn't that he got away with the murders that bothers me so much,” Shan said. “It's that he feels no guilt.”

The American leaned close to Shan. “I have friends in the German government. Vogel will never serve in a diplomatic post again.” He studied Shan's hard expression and grimaced. “I'm sorry it has to end so fast,” the American said. “I would have liked to come and inspect your ditches. But it has to be this way. Hannah is getting worse. I would have asked for a medical evacuation if this hadn't happened. You killed the Commission, Shan. Call it a victory and go hide in the hills of Lhadrung, out of Pao's reach.”

“I'll see you off.”

“No. It will be the middle of the night.” Judson awkwardly extended his hand. “I don't know what to say.”

“I never got to ask you,” Shan said as they shook hands, “you said you joined the Commission after you got a call. You never said who called.”

Judson seemed reluctant to answer. A hollow smile grew on his face. “Hannah called. She had a problem, and the Commission was the answer.”

Shan nodded uncertainly. “I'm afraid you didn't find salvation on your trip to Tibet.”

Judson offered a bitter grin. “That remains to be seen.”

Shan did see the foreigners off, from the roof of his building. The wind was cold, a harbinger of a bitter winter ahead, but he stood with it in his face to watch as the three foreigners, Vogel in one car and the Americans in another, loaded their bags and departed. The red ember of a cigarette marked where Major Sung watched from beside the town gate. In the light of the full moon, Shan could see half a dozen shadowed figures observing from the slope above the town.

A knob arrived for Shan at first light, escorting him to Sung's command center. The major had an open line to the airport and was confirming that the foreigners had boarded their planes. “Hold them!” Sung ordered, and handed the phone to a sergeant as he gestured Shan to a corner. Shan wasn't there to assist, but to be watched. The major snapped a question to a lieutenant, who looked up from a screen to report that Dawa's cell phone was now less than a mile away. The major lifted a handheld radio. “Confirm her identity!” he barked. “You are out there to confirm she is there!”

“She is in the grove where the old chapel was,” came a familiar voice. Dawa had not let Shan hear her plans for Tuan, but she wanted him involved, and the Religious Affairs officer's role had been guaranteed when Shan demanded of Sung that Tuan play no role. Tuan, Pao's obedient servant, could be relied on to confirm Dawa's identity.

“Weather is closing around the Himalayas,” the sergeant on the line to the airport reported. “Ten minutes, no more.”

The lieutenant monitoring Dawa's cell phone looked up in alarm. “She's opened a line to the airport herself!”

Sung snapped an order, and his team gathered up equipment and ran out the door, Shan a step behind.

Madame Choi waited at an outpost by the Yamdrok road near the corner of the town wall. Knobs were scanning the slopes with binoculars. “Five minutes!” called the sergeant connected to the airport. Sung glared at Shan, who had made it clear that Dawa would not surrender without confirmation that the foreigners were en route out of the country. She could still lose herself in the maze of mountain trails rising up on the far side of Yamdrok. “Where is she?” Sung shouted into his handheld radio.

“Climbing the hill toward you,” came Tuan's voice. “She has a phone to her ear, talking to someone!”