Текст книги "The Lord of Death"

Автор книги: Eliot Pattison

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But the old diviner only nodded, as if the explanation made perfect sense to her. “Are you strong enough to find the rest of it for him, so he can move on?” she asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“The truth. The truth about my uncle will be a heavy, dangerous thing. It will not want to be found.”

Shan nodded. The truth about the dead mule would also be the truth that would protect Tan, and therefore could be the truth that kept Shan’s son alive. Someone, on the same day, had assassinated the minister, a Western woman, and a mule.

“But I was casting the bones last night,” she declared in an apologetic tone. “And again just here. They said the same thing each time. A very strong portent. On the path of death lies more death.”

Shan closed his eyes a moment then gazed at the snowcapped peaks beyond the little valley. He extended his hand to the woman to help her up as he spoke again. “We’re going to need more wood.”

Chapter Five

Onward and onward! It was the shining light of the Party and Chairman Mao Tse-tung who gave us boundless strength and wisdom!read the dusty banner on the wall behind Tsipon’s desk. The quote was famous in the region, the fervent declaration from the journal of the first Chinese team to have ascended Chomolungma, emblazoned on tourist brochures and regional histories. On the adjoining wall was a new banner, almost as big, announcing the opening of the Snow Leopard Guesthouse, the most luxurious accommodation in the Himalayan region.

It was an hour after dawn, far too early for Tsipon to have stirred from his comfortable house on the slope above town, but with enough light cast through the windows for Shan to see without switching on a telltale bulb. He headed straight for the table under the window, where Tsipon’s secretary maintained an informal archive dedicated to local mountaineering: photos of early climbers, year-by-year statistics on expeditions, annals of the Chinese Mountain Institute, and copies of the regional newspaper.

With the battering of his mind and body, his memories of the murder scene had become so blurred he could almost believe everyone’s denial that any Westerner had been there. But he believed his dreams. Her face had haunted his sleep ever since that terrible day. In a nightmare the previous night, Shan had been lying broken and bleeding on a cell floor when the blood-soaked blond woman had appeared and carried Shan away from his cell, telling him in a comforting tone that the mountain was calling him for his final climb, that he shouldn’t think of it as death, just a cold, windy passage to a loftier existence.

He had decided that her face, though not familiar to him, was not altogether new. He had a sense he had seen Yates with a woman at the base camp, though he could not be certain since Public Security worked hard to discourage the support staff from mingling with the Westerners. But Kypo had confirmed that the American had a partner who was a famous climber, a woman named Ross.

He had planned to find her photo, tear it out and rush out of the office. But it took much longer than he had expected, as he futilely leafed through every newspaper from the past three months then started over, reminding himself to look for different hairstyles, different apparel, as he studied each of the many group photos. When he finally found her, her hair was much longer, shadowing part of her face, under an American style visored cap.

She stood in the center of the front row of a group of two dozen, described in the caption simply as the American guest speaker at a luncheon of the local climbing industry, celebrating the launch of the season, announcing American funding of a new environmental campaign to clean litter off the upper slopes of Everest.

He ripped the page out of the paper, folded it, and stuffed it into a pocket, then resumed his search. Westerners were conspicuous and popular subjects during the season. Within five minutes he had found her again, a clearer image showing an athletic woman with a gentle, self-conscious smile shaking hands with a representative of the Ministry of Education in front of a new one-room schoolhouse donated by an American climbing club. He was scanning the second article, about to extract it, when the overhead light switched on.

Tsipon stood in the doorway, his face smoldering.

“Who is she?” Shan demanded before the Tibetan could speak. Shan held the photo in front of him, advancing toward the door.

The image of the woman seemed to jar Tsipon. He stared at it, his anger fading, as Shan repeated his question, then he pulled it from Shan’s grip.

“Megan Ross, it says,” Tsipon read. “Citizen of the United States.”

“You knew her. You must have known her.”

Tsipon glanced expectantly toward the entry to the building, then frowned. “Known her? I know her. A troublemaker. An agitator from the outside who has no notion of the delicate balance of politics in our world. Last year she started a petition demanding that Beijing send the climbing fees it collects to the mountain villages, abruptly announcing it at the climbing society banquet at the end of the season. She said every cent should be given to rebuild the temples leveled by Beijing so the mountain would be content again and stop taking so many lives. I told her if she wanted people to listen to her speak about temples she was going to have to die and come back as a Buddhist nun.”

“She did die, in my arms, beside Minister Wu.”

Tsipon rolled his eyes. “I read about a particular form of paranoid delusion, imagining that celebrities die in your presence. I know of a hospital near here that could deal with all that ails you,” the Tibetan added with a meaningful gaze, then saw Shan’s insistent expression and shrugged. “You can’t possibly think the death of an American could be kept quiet.”

“Cao has somehow managed to do so. Find someone who has seen her since that day. Anyone.”

“She is secretive. She has people who grant her confidential favors. She doesn’t like the spotlight.”

“You seem to know her well. If she is alive, contact her,” Shan pressed.

Tsipon glanced out the door again before taking another step inside. “I have to get along with all the foreign climbers. They are our lifeblood. Megan Ross has a list of the peaks she wants to climb. A life list she calls it. Did you know there are over twenty peaks of more than twenty thousand feet in this region alone? Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Sishapangma. And nearly all of them officially closed to foreigners. Sometimes she goes off for a few days and when she returns another mountain is crossed off her list.”

Shan considered the challenge in Tsipon’s eyes. “You mean youhelp her. Yougrant her secret favors.”

Tsipon shrugged. “She’s American,” he said, as if it explained much. “She’s been coming here for years, works with that man Yates now, and has influence with all the expedition companies. She needs equipment sometimes. Nothing much. Freeze dried food. Some climbing hardware, most of which she returns. A guide who can keep secrets. Sometimes even a private truck ride in the middle of the night. She pays in dollars. Dollars are very helpful to have. Some of the sherpas from Nepal insist on being paid in dollars.”

“Contact her.”

Tsipon glanced at his watch. “She isn’t stupid. She doesn’t tell me about every trip. And no one will talk even if they know. These are illegal climbs. No permits. No fees. Some are close to military bases.”

A new thought occurred to Shan. “Why would she know the minister of Tourism?” And why, he asked himself, would she have confronted the minister as she was driving up the mountain?

“You need to see a doctor for this disease of yours. She hated what the Minister was doing to the mountain. Ross said the minister acted like she owned Chomolungma. The minister was the enemy to her.”

And that, Shan realized, might have been exactly why Ross had met the minister on the mountain.

Tsipon stepped to a calendar on the wall by the door, lifting a marker from a nearby bookshelf. He put crosses through the past five days. “I need the body of that sherpa. You’ve got one more day. You should be in the mountains.”

Shan kept pressing. “How would a foreigner like Ross get past the Minister’s security?”

“The road was closed. When the minister suggested she go up without an escort, no one objected. She wanted to drive herself, experience the passage up the mountain as a tourist.”

“How do you know that?”

Tsipon offered a sly smile. “Because she borrowed one of the rental cars from the new guesthouse, free of charge.”

“And you,” Shan ventured, “have gone into the rental car business.”

Tsipon smiled again. “I only have a partial interest in the guesthouse. But the car agency is all mine. When I heard she wanted to drive herself, I readily offered our biggest car. The front license plate had an advertisement for the agency. Celebrity promotion.”

Shan gazed with foreboding at the calendar. “How is the prisoner?”

Tsipon looked out the door one more time, then paused, looking down, as if deciding something. “Yesterday they brought in more specialists, from out of town. An ambulance was called to the jail last night. Forget your colonel. I need the dead sherpa. And right now,” he added in a pointed tone, “I need for you to come with me.”

Shan silently straightened the newspapers, considering the many ways Tsipon could be laying a trap for him, then followed.

Outside a black sedan waited, bearing the number plates for a government car from Lhasa. Beside it paced a refined Chinese man, overdressed in a black overcoat and red fox cap.

“Comrade Shan,” Tsipon declared, “I don’t think you have met our distinguished visitor from the capital. Comrade Director Xie of the Bureau of Religious Affairs.”

Shan’s mouth went bone dry. He offered a hesitant nod.

“One of our glorious rehabilitated émigrés,” Xie observed in a polished voice as he reached for Shan’s hand. He made it sound as if Shan had decided to migrate to Tibet for his health. “I have heard about your skills with the local population.”

As Shan retreated a step Tsipon’s hand closed around his arm.

“At work before dawn as usual,” Tsipon declared to Xie, pulling Shan with him toward the car. “Two of the sharpest minds in Tibet gracing our little town at the same time. Great deeds can’t be far behind.” He herded Shan into the rear seat as Xie walked around and climbed in the opposite side, leaving Shan trapped between the two men as the sedan pulled away.

The Snow Leopard Guesthouse was a compact two story building of stucco and wood with a steep roof designed, Shan surmised, to conform to a Chinese concept of an alpine chalet. As the sedan pulled up to its front door the sun burst out through low-hanging clouds to the east, casting a brilliant gold light on snowcapped Chomolungma. Shan walked casually along the front of the building as Tsipon boasted to Xie about his new hotel, proudly pointing out its Western structural features and the adjacent plot they had targeted for expansion with a swimming pool. Shan reached the end of the building, looking around the corner before turning back. The old Jiefang truck was visible at the side of the hotel, two Public Security cars at the back of the parking lot.

Director Xie insisted that the driver take photos of him posing with his new friends with the mountain as a backdrop before following Tsipon inside, past the reception desk, into a private room with a table set for breakfast. The walls in the room were adorned with photographs not of the Himalayan highlands but of Beijing, with one wall bearing nothing but a large airbrushed portrait of the Great Helmsman. The buffet on the sideboard was a cosmopolitan blend of dumplings, rice porridge, pickled vegetables, red bean soup, fried bread, pastries, tea, and coffee. As Director Xie settled into a chair at the head of the table with a cup of coffee and a plate of pastries and vegetables, a solemn middle-aged woman in a dark business suit slipped into the chair at the opposite end. “Madame Zheng from Beijing,” the director offered in introduction.

“It isn’t often we are given an opportunity to so directly serve Beijing,” Tsipon said with an uncertain glance at the woman before turning back to Xie. “Shan will be pleased to tell you all about the local gompas.”

Shan’s hand tightened around his cup of tea.

“The soft spots on our southern underbelly,” Director Xie put in as he lifted a pickle in his chopsticks. “We have long suspected renewed criminal efforts by the Dalai Clique.” Although the government never officially referred to the Dalai Lama by name, this new, more conceptual term had crept into government pronouncements, always the two words together, in the same tone used for the notorious Gang of Four.

“The gompas are small,” Shan replied in a tight voice. “Harmless.”

“If they were harmless my office wouldn’t exist,” Xie offered good-naturedly. “And once,” he added, looking at Madame Zheng now, “they were much bigger, building great wealth by oppressing the peasant class.”

Tsipon sampled one of the small, hard pastries. “Director Xie has a fascinating theory.”

“They had jewel-mounted statues, figures made of gold accumulated over centuries,” Xie announced, “the fruits of their enslavement of the masses. Are you aware, Comrade Shan, the Party has decreed that all religious artifacts belong to the state?”

“Of course.” Shan felt the steady, probing gaze of Madame Zheng. Although Tsipon had stopped looking at her, apparently dismissing the silent woman as a clerk, Shan had learned to be wary of anonymous, well-dressed bureaucrats from Beijing.

“We have chronic problems with the accuracy of our inventories. I believe we will find these monks were smuggling state artifacts across the border to fund the criminal element, the splitists, in exile. Why else would they refuse to sign their loyalty oaths?”

Shan struggle to keep emotion out of his face as he studied the bureaucrat from Lhasa. Here, according to government doctrine, was one of the handful of officials to whom Tibetan Buddhists were accountable, a supreme regulator of lamas, a genuine wheelsmasher. Under the direction of officials like Xie, teams had been moving through Tibet during the past year, replacing prayer banners with slogans in praise of Mao.

Xie pushed back his dishes and began to unfold a map. “I look forward, Comrade Shan, to working with you in apprehending our fugitives. They no doubt have conspirators in other monasteries.”

Shan stopped breathing for a moment. He looked at Tsipon. The Tibetan had not planned on Shan’s joining his private breakfast. He had brought him as punishment for trespassing in his office, had brought him to demonstrate again that no matter how hopeless Shan’s plight might seem, Tsipon was always able to make it worse.

The Tibetan rose and poured more coffee for Xie. “I apologize,” Tsipon said in a generous tone, “if I gave the impression that Shan could be spared at this particular time. The entire climbing industry depends on a handful of skilled individuals. Of course, just a few insights for now from our envoy to the mountain people could be invaluable. Comrade Shan, you should point out on the map locations of the gompas that are active.”

Some might have thought it merely ironic that a Tibetan would force a Chinese to identify the location of monks targeted by Religious Affairs. But for Tsipon it wasn’t about intimidating monks, it was about intimidating Shan. Any number of people, including Tsipon, could have given Xie the location of the gompas, he could even have obtained them with a quick stop at the town’s library. But Tsipon meant to shove Shan into Xie’s scheme.

Shan swallowed hard, extracted a pencil, and began to draw little circles on Xie’s map.

“And that of the fugitives?” Xie asked. “Sarma gompa, I believe it is called.”

Shan hesitated, feeling Tsipon’s hard stare, and made one more mark on the map, down a dirt track a few miles off the road to Chomolungma.

Thirty minutes later, Tsipon having at last departed with Director Xie, Shan walked down the second-floor corridor of the guesthouse, attired in clean coveralls, carrying on his shoulder a canvas bag of tools borrowed from Kypo, whom he had found in the garage. As he expected, a Public Security guard sat on a chair outside the best corner room, eyeing him with idle curiosity. Tacked to the door was a sign declaring the room sealed by order of Public Security. A tray with dirty dishes lay on the floor beside the guard’s chair. He was not leaving for meals. Shan was not going to get past him.

Outside, along the edge of the parking lot, he found a ladder being used to paint the balconies of the second-floor rooms.

“Those guards will shoot you if they find you inside that room,” Kypo warned over his shoulder.

“I need you to switch the ladder to the adjoining balcony after I climb up, hang a bucket of paint on it. Then put it back ten minutes later.”

“Not a chance. Then they’ll know you had an accomplice.”

Shan eyed the old truck parked beside the rental shed. “Then get in the Jiefang. Start it up if anyone in a uniform comes around the front corner. I’ll hear it.”

Moments later Shan had the ladder up and was over the balcony. With a prayer to the protector deities he put his hand on the sliding door. It silently slid open.

Stepping to the inside wall he lowered himself to the floor, folding his legs underneath him, moving his head from side to side as he studied the room. From left to right he saw a writing table, a trash can, then the open bathroom door, a side table with a lamp, an unmade bed with a coverlet decorated with pandas playing on clouds, a stand holding an open suitcase bearing an Italian logo, and finally a small closet with a half opened door. He pressed his hands together, his index fingers raised like a steeple, focusing himself, then repeated the process, turning his head much more slowly. On the desk the writing pad supplied by the hotel had been used; a ballpoint pen leaned against a blue three ring binder beside a clear glass ashtray bearing two cigarette butts, both with smears of dark lipstick. On the floor beside the trashcan was a sheet of paper that had been wadded then later straightened out, probably by a Public Security photographer. The bathroom rug was askew, towels tossed on the floor. The lamp on the bedtable had something of red silk, a blouse or nightgown, thrown over the shade. On the floor beneath the open suitcase was a pile of clothes.

He rose and went to the desk, lifting one of the cigarette butts to his nose. Menthols. The front of the binder bore the imprint of the Ministry of Tourism arrayed over stylized mountain peaks. Inside the cover was the agenda for the conference, followed by other meeting materials. Shan quickly leafed through the pages. Maps of tourist attractions. Lists of proposed new attractions, including a new Museum of the Yeti. An attendance list. The minister was at the top of the listed attendees, followed by several national and Tibetan officials, then over a dozen county administrators, including Colonel Tan of Lhadrung County. Next came a keynote speech by the minister, to be presented the day of her murder, titled A Ten Point Plan for Converting Himalayan China to a Global Tourist Destination.

The shelves of the closet looked like those of a department store. A new digital camera. A tiny white box into which earphones were plugged. A pair of binoculars. A new sweater from Tibetan looms. Several small boxes of jewelry. Some of the packages showed no sign of ever having been opened. The giving of tribute to high-ranking officials was one of the few ancient traditions Beijing had decided to tolerate.

Car ready at 9 a.m.,said the crumpled paper on the floor, a note from the front desk. He quickly examined the clothes on the floor, then in the suitcase, finding denim jeans and running shoes along with many expensive foreign-made blouses and skirts. He eyed the red silk on the lamp by the bed. The minister had been at least as old as Shan, but she had lived young.

The drawer on the nightstand was slightly ajar. Using the tip of his finger on the bottom of the drawer he pried it open. On top of a small silk handkerchief lay an empty box of cigarettes into which a tightly rolled paper had been stuffed, its end extending from the box. Not just any paper. It was a parchment page from a Tibetan peche, one of the traditional unbound books of scripture. With a chill he extracted the page, unrolled it. It seemed to have no particular meaning, just a page extracted from the teachings of the great poet Milarepa, once a resident of the region.

Shan gazed, uncomprehending, at the parchment, turning it over, finding only spots of age on the reverse side. It was easily a century old, probably much more. He looked inside the package, finding nothing, then sniffed it. It had contained a strong, unfiltered brand, not the kind smoked by the minister. He rolled the paper again and was putting it back into its container when he saw words scrawled on the inside of the folding top. Eight o’clock tonight,the note said, nothing more.

He quickly checked the rest of the chamber and the bathroom finding more of the minister’s expensive accoutrements, then returned to the bedside drawer. The cigarette package and page would have seemed like trash to anyone else in the hotel but the minister had placed them on a silk handkerchief and kept them by her bed. He closed the drawer then opened it one more time. The prayer rolled up like a cigarette filled him with foreboding.

Moments later he was outside, the ladder stowed away, surveying the parking lot again for watchers. Finding none, he went to the largest of the rental cars, in the rear of the cinderblock garage, a gray sedan with a yellow Public Security warning sticker on its windscreen and gray tape in a large X pattern sealing the driver’s door. Before taking a step closer, Shan rummaged in the mechanic’s bag and extracted a roll of similar duct tape, which he waved as he approached Kypo.

The Tibetan’s face drained of color. “If they found us touching that car they would leave us attached to the battery charger all night.”

“Which is why you are going to stand at the entrance to the garage and honk one of the car horns if you glimpse any uniform coming in this direction. If they ask why, it is because you are testing the rental cars.” Shan hesitated a moment before turning back to the car, wondering why it was Kypo not Jomo, the mechanic, who was working on the cars that day.

He worked quickly, stripping off the tape, opening the door to examine the seat, the seat belt, the position of the adjustable steering wheel, before slipping in behind the wheel. Minister Wu had driven her own car, Tsipon had said, spurning any escort. Shan tested his own legs in reaching the foot pedals, stretching to reach them. The car had been towed there, and he could rely on the knobs to have sense enough not to tamper with the interior. But he had seen the woman, knew that the minister was shorter than Shan. Someone else, not the minister, had last driven the car.

He opened the front passenger’s door, again examining the seat then, with a piece of the tape wrapped around his fingers, adhesive side outward, lightly brushed the fabric of the seat and headrest, picking up nothing but dirt and lint. He paused, glancing at Kypo at the entrance, then opened the rear door and repeated the process with new tape, quickly finding several black hairs on one side of the rear seat, then several blond hairs on the other. He stared at the hairs, the first tangible evidence that he not imagined the dead American. But he had been wrong to assume she had intruded, had been lying in wait for the minister. She had been in the car, riding up the mountain with Wu.

The rest of the vehicle offered nothing else except two cigarette butts in the rear ashtray, bearing smudges of dark lipstick. He sniffed the cigarettes. Menthol again.

“Who else was in this car just before the minister took it?” he asked as Kypo helped him tape the door again.

“No one. Tsipon said save it for her, clean it like new before she arrived. Put in some peaches.”

“Peaches?”

“She was from Beijing. He read in a book somewhere about how the imperial family always liked peaches. So Tsipon ordered a little basket of peaches from Shigatse for her.”

“Were you here to present the car to the minister?”

“Not me. Tsipon wouldn’t let any of us near her. She was like a visiting deity. He probably had the hotel manager do it.”

Shan paced slowly around the car. “Guests can charge a car to their hotel account?”

Kypo nodded.

“How do you know if they are registered at the hotel?”

“They send a list each morning from the front desk. Guests get special rates.”

“What happens to the list?”

“The hotel has only been open two weeks. No one’s going to worry about filing until piles of paper cover the desk.”

Two of the guest lists Shan sought were hidden under a repair manual, the third, covered with stains of grease and tea, lay beside a bulky cloth-draped object. The day of the killing, and for two days before, Minister Wu had been booked as a guest. Colonel Tan had arrived the day before the killing. Megan Ross’s name appeared nowhere, though the American Yates had been a guest the night before the murders, when there had been a banquet to launch the tourism conference.

Shan studied the vehicles in the garage. “How many other cars are there?”

“These three. But Tsipon is arranging for more vehicles. He’s betting big on tourism. Last week I found him looking over brochures for apartments in Macau.”

“What kind of vehicles?”

“Utility vehicles mostly, for climbers and base camp organizers. When my grandfather took climbers, they walked with packs for miles, from the highway to Rongphu gompa to sit with the gods before climbing. It’s no wonder so many die today.”

Shan studied the Tibetan, wondering whether he meant it was the long acclimatizing trek or the worshipping that saved lives, then noticed the cloth-draped object again. He had assumed it was an engine part under repair. But now he saw a small naked foot protruding from the oil-stained cloth.

Kypo, noticing Shan’s gaze, sprang into action, turning out the desk light, taking a step toward the old blue truck that waited for them, suggesting they leave. Shan gestured for him to lead and stood as if to follow, then flung off the cloth.

The bronze statue of Yama, the Lord of Death, was perhaps eight inches tall, atop a heavy base set with a ring of turquoise stones.

“Is this the secret of Tsipon’s success, a god in every car?”

Kypo muttered a curse and trotted to the bench, lifting the cloth to cover the figure again. “It’s nothing, just an old thing that nobody cares about.”

“It’s one of the stolen statues.”

“Not stolen. They’re wandering back now.” Kypo, like many Tibetans Shan knew, tended to speak of their deities as if they were members of their households.

“You’re saying the thief is bringing them back?”

“More or less. The first one that went missing was found on the doorstep of an old weaver at the edge of the village, a couple days ago. Half a dozen were taken from the village, and most have been brought back now. Found on a doorstep, in a hay manger, one inside a butter churn, one down at the flour mill.”

“Sort of a Yama scavenger hunt,” Shan mused. “But surely this one wasn’t returned here.”

“No. But I need to fix it before my mother sees it. She would call it an omen, that this happened to one of deities from the altar behind her house.”

“One?”

Kypo nodded. “There was a much older, more valuable statue of Tara, the goddess, beside the Yama. But only the Yama was taken. Then last night he came back, left on the wall behind my house. He was changed like the others,” Kypo added in a voice full of worry. “Her altar is special, people come there from all over the village. She might tell the villagers something through her dice that-” Kypo stopped, glancing uneasily at Shan. What was he saying about his mother’s use of her astrological powers?

“What do you mean the statues were changed?”

“When an old man down the road had his statue returned, he told her something inside had been released, said no one should insult Uncle Shinje this way,” Kypo said. “She was upset when he showed her. I found her in her house crying,” he added, confusion entering his voice. “She is the strongest woman I know, and she was crying over someone’s little god.”

Shan lifted the statue, testing the weight. As with most such figures, the base was hollow, for the small slips of prayers and charms that were traditionally sealed inside when the statue was consecrated. He turned it over. In the center of the bronze plate on the bottom was a neat half-inch hole, recently drilled.

“They all come back like this,” Kypo whispered in a haunted tone. “I thought I could repair it before my mother saw. Like the others, the sacred papers are left inside but the same hole is made in each. People say something inside has been incubating, waiting all these years to hatch. People say Yama is sending out worms of death.”

The two-legged demon of Shogo town was communing with his gods, sitting on the altar he had built against the wall of an old shed that overlooked the trash pit. Gyalo was so drunk he did not seem to notice Shan as he lowered himself to sit before him. The former lama, perched on his altar beside a candle, swayed back and forth, gazing without focus into the darkness of the gully below, into which the remains of the old town gompa, once the largest in the county, had been bulldozed decades earlier.

At first Shan thought the low murmur arising from his lips might be a mantra, but then Gyalo belched and he recognized it as a bawdy drinking song favored by herdsmen.

Shan had returned to his stable home and searched in his second, hidden workshop to find another Yama statue, which he now placed in the circle of light cast by the candle by the altar. “Where is the home of the Lord of Death, grandfather?”