Текст книги "Bone Mountain"

Автор книги: Eliot Pattison

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Just as Dremu seemed about to pounce around an outcropping onto the drummer, the Golok jerked back and held his shoulder, wincing with pain. The drumming stopped, and they heard the sound of feet running. He looked in despair at his shoulder, slowly lifting his fingers. "Buddha's breath! I thought I was shot." He bent and picked up a round stone from near his feet, a pebble that did not belong with the sharp granite shards that otherwise lay underfoot. "A sling," he said, with a hint of respect in his voice, as he looked about cautiously.

The slope was silent, and seemed empty now. Dremu rubbed his shoulder, seeming reluctant to follow. In the hands of an expert a sling could be as deadly as a rifle. He bent low and inched around the rock.

The patch of ground on the far side of the outcropping showed evidence of several boots; prints of the smooth-soled boots worn by Tibetans, made with woolen uppers. They were nearly all small prints.

"Children," Dremu announced as he squatted by the tracks. "Two or three children," he said in a puzzled tone. "Maybe one adult. They sat, and knelt," he explained, pointing to several areas where the earth was pressed smooth. The site had been chosen well, with two large slabs of rock behind it to amplify the sound in the direction of the valley. Shan bent and lifted several pieces of grass that lay at the edge of the clearing. They had little knots tied in them. On a small boulder in front, facing the valley, someone had worked with a chisel, trying to cut away a piece of rock, trying to make an elongated hole in front of the rock.

"For the eye," Dremu said over his shoulder, and with a rush of excitement Shan realized the Golok was right. The eye was back in the valley, and someone had been trying to fashion a new home for it. Shan found himself touching the hole, feeling its rough contours. He stared at the crudely worked stone until finally he realized the Golok was staring at him. Dremu seemed to be waiting for orders.

"Some of the villagers thought it was you who took the eye," Shan said. "I can tell them otherwise now."

Dremu scowled. "You mean you thought it, too. Or you would have told them already."

Shan said nothing.

"I wouldn't have done that. Not before you got it back to the valley."

"You mean you planned to take it."

The Golok stared at Shan. "I don't usually plan that far ahead," he said, and offered a hollow grin. "It's just that… I think my father and grandfather need me to do something about it. Could you understand that?"

Shan nodded soberly, and the Golok brightened and gestured down the slope. "There were sick people who came to the valley. Some had children. Some of the village children fled."

Shan saw for the first time that Dremu's gau, and the small pouch that had hung beside it, were both missing. "You should get food," he suggested, studying the gaunt man. "And rest." But he didn't know how, didn't know where the other Tibetans were, and who would offer help to the Golok. He could not send Dremu to the mixing ledge, where Lhandro was, who had thrown stones at him. "That monk Gyalo and his yak are in the mountains, on the high ridges. If you can find them they will help you get food. All the others have fled. You should, too, until the soldiers go."

"Not all," Dremu countered.

"You mean the drummer."

"I saw some others on the slope this morning. In the high rocks, moving stealthfully. I think maybe they are trying to damage the oil rig."

"Purbas?" Shan asked with a chill.

"I only saw them from a distance. They moved slow, and without fear, as if they didn't care about the soldiers. Probably they have charms to protect them."

Shan stared at the Golok uncertainly, then, asking him once more to leave for the high ranges, he turned and jogged away. He found a game trail that ran parallel to the valley floor and had trotted northward on it for several minutes, watching for movement on the upper slopes and the shadows of caves, when suddenly two figures appeared on the trail in the distance– not walking so much as strolling, conversing, watching the ground as if hunting for something. Shan faded into the shadows between two rocks. He pushed back as far as he could in the cleft and watched, first with fear, then with confusion as two shadows passed by. One of the figures was singing a Tibetan pilgrim's song.

He scrambled out and leapt forward. "Lokesh!" he called out in alarm.

Thirty feet down the trail his old friend turned and offered his crooked grin. "Good fortune!" Lokesh exclaimed. "You can help us, Xiao Shan." His companion, wearing an amused grin, awkwardly raised a hand in greeting to Shan. Tenzin.

"Help with what?" Shan asked in exasperation, looking about for some place to hide the men.

"I told you," Lokesh said sheepishly. "Looking for medicine herbs. Tenzin wants to learn about herbs too."

"In the mountains, you said in the mountains."

Lokesh waved his hand around the landscape. "The mountains around Yapchi," he said with another grin. "Surely you remember. Jokar Rinpoche said it would help that officer. His heart wind is so distressed he could die."

"Tell me where," Shan said in a pleading voice. "Tell me where and I will get your herbs. Just go back. Now-"

His words choked in his throat. Two green uniformed soldiers stepped around a large tree less than a hundred feet away. From behind the soldiers a figure in a white shirt emerged, followed by half a dozen other Tibetans. Shan recognized the man in white. Director Tuan. Four of the others were oil workers, wearing the green jackets of the venture. But the other two wore the robes of monks.

Tenzin gasped as he saw Tuan, grabbed Lokesh and pointed urgently toward the trees above them, pushing him away from the trail. But another soldier appeared on the slope above, thirty feet away, and began speaking excitedly into a small radio.

A moment later a whistle blew from the direction of the camp. Shan saw more of Tuan's white-shirted guards running up the slope. There was no hope, no chance of escape. The soldiers and howlers had won.

Their captors swarmed around them. Lokesh lowered himself to the ground and began saying his beads. Tenzin seemed frozen, looking from Shan to Lokesh with a grim, apologetic expression.

But it wasn't the soldiers who stepped forward to claim the capture. Instead Tuan pulled a camera from a belt pouch and began taking photographs. Of Tenzin, of Lokesh, of the two monks who trotted forward and stood by Tenzin.

One of the monks grabbed Tenzin's hand in both his own. "Rejoice with us, Rinpoche," the monk said gleefully. "Our teacher is returned to us."

Rinpoche. Shan looked at the monk, more confused than ever. He had called the fugitive Rinpoche.

Tenzin, his face still grim, looked at the monk and sighed. "I am no longer your teacher," he said in his deep, melodious voice. "I am but a novice again, and have found new teachers," he added, and gestured toward Lokesh and Shan.

The monk looked injured. Lokesh stared in wonder.

Tuan grimaced. "The abbot of Sangchi will learn to teach again someday," he declared with a victorious smile, and nodded toward the howler guards as more soldiers arrived, guns at the ready. One of the soldiers stepped forward and in a blur of motion fastened a manacle around Tenzin's wrist. Then he bent, roughly grabbed Lokesh's arm, and fastened the other end of the manacle to the old Tibetan.

"We need you, Rinpoche," one of the monks said with a sob, then, with an impatient gesture by Tuan, the soldiers jerked Lokesh to his feet, cutting off his mantra.

Shan watched, paralyzed with confusion, as Lokesh and the abbot of Sangchi were led down the path toward the oil camp.

Chapter Fourteen

Shan had learned from the lamas how to confront the lies that had once ruled his life, and how to abandon both the lies and the comfort they had given him. The lie that for twenty years as an investigator in Beijing he had made a difference. The lie that he and his wife, or at least he and his son, would someday be reconciled and reunited. And the lie that his release from the gulag meant he could live the rest of his life in freedom. He had come to accept that he would be returned to a hard labor camp eventually. For Shan, in the life he had chosen it was as inevitable as death, and perhaps above all else, the Tibetans had taught him not only to stop fearing, but to embrace the inevitable.

Yet somehow he always clung to the illusion that Lokesh could not be touched, that thirty years of his life had been enough to give to Beijing. It was an illusion that fed Shan's twisted view of the world, the view that said everything else was worth it, all the suffering could be endured, because a few wise, joyful creatures like Lokesh survived and walked the remote corners of Tibet.

But Lokesh would not survive. He had been taken by the soldiers and howlers, who had been told that the abbot of Sangchi was in the hands of purbas. The two would be kept together, for that was the way their handlers would prefer it. They would use Lokesh, make him suffer to extract whatever it was they wanted from Tenzin. With only one prisoner to interrogate they would eventually resort to chemicals, as they had with Shan in his early days of capture. But chemicals gave unpredictable results, and though few Tibetans would give information under torture, they would often surrender it when a companion was tortured because of them.

He let himself drift down with the crowd that had assembled around the new prisoners as they were conveyed into the camp. No one questioned him. No one came to put manacles on him. Tuan did not even seem to have noticed Shan. The excitement over the discovery of the famous abbot of Sangchi seemed to distract everyone.

He had been so blind. Gendun had known, and Shopo. Someone had died, Gendun had said. He had meant the abbot had somehow died, and Tenzin was trying to find a new life. He recalled Tenzin's first words to him, that day overlooking the red river. It was possible to start a new incarnation in the same body, because Shan had done so. Images flashed through Shan's mind: of Tenzin's anguish over Drakte's death, of the bitter way he had heaved a rock into the lake when Shan had suggested a pebble might capture his guilt, of the days and weeks he had watched the tall Tibetan carry dung. Shan had suspected Tenzin was the infamous Tiger, trying to reform after a life of violence. But some other dark weight had hung around the soul of the abbot of Sangchi, and he had decided to start again. And now they were dragging him back in chains, back to the particular prison he had fled.

As the soldiers led their prisoners past the army tents a loud argument broke out. A beefy soldier whom Shan remembered as Lin's sergeant shouted that the prisoners belonged to the 54th Mountain Combat Brigade. But the howlers kept pushing the two men toward one of the white utility vehicles. Tuan hovered close to Tenzin and stood with four of his men behind him as the sergeant railed, then one of the men in white shirts stepped to the soldier's side, spoke quietly, and handed the man a business card. As Shan stepped closer, trying to hear, a hand closed around his shoulder.

"You must have a death wish," Winslow growled, and pulled Shan away. "Jenkins told me what he knows. Mostly it's that you are number one on the list for the 54th Combat Brigade. They have your name. They think you may be a criminal escapee, that you kidnapped Lin. They're sending more troops in. Looking for Lin, looking for you."

Shan let himself be pulled by Winslow as he watched numbly. Lokesh and Tenzin were being photographed again, standing by the white trucks, wearing leg manacles now, their hands unfettered. For appearances, for the photographs, because the howlers would not want to show the abbot in chains. Shan stared, still perplexed, and did not protest when Winslow pushed him into the bay of a cargo truck and followed him over the tailgate. Shan hardly noticed when the truck began to move. He opened his mouth to call out for Lokesh but his tongue was too dry to speak. The truck passed quickly through the gap in the low saddle of land and the camp was gone.

Shan gazed out the rear of the truck for a long time, half expecting to see the white trucks speeding behind them. Lokesh and Tenzin would go to a Public Security lockup, which would most likely be in the nearest large town. He pulled out the map he had taken from Jenkins's conference room. Wenquan, or maybe Yanshiping. He would get out of the truck at whatever town they passed through. But maybe the soldiers would take their prisoners south, directly to Lhasa. In which case he should jump out at the first crossroads. And do what? Throw stones when the soldiers raced by?

"Best thing we can do is get some sleep," Winslow said as the truck began a steep descent through the long narrow gorge that led out of the mountains.

"Sleep?" Shan asked in confusion.

Winslow gestured at the map in his hand. "It'll be late by the time we arrive. At least seven hours' drive, if the roads are clear."

Shan looked about the cargo bay. It was mostly empty, a few cardboard cartons were stacked against the cab and secured with twine to the slats of the bay. There were ropes and a pile of what appeared to be dirty coveralls, and several empty shipping pallets with the oil company's name stenciled on them.

"Golmud?" he asked in disbelief.

Winslow nodded. "Venture headquarters. Center of operations. Where we can find out about Zhu's crew. Where Jenkins said somebody accessed Larkin's electronic mail account."

"When?"

"Two weeks ago."

"But that was before she died," Shan said in confusion.

"Right. Except she was supposed to be in the mountains on field work at the time. Someone used her pass code at Golmud two weeks ago."

Shan stared at the American and shook his head. "I can't," he protested, and put his hand on the side of the truck to lift himself up. "Lokesh-"

"Lokesh will get little help from you if you are arrested," a woman's voice interjected.

Shan and Winslow both spun about to see a shape rising out of the pile of clothing. Shan stared at the lean, sinewy woman, the only person in the oil camp who had known Lokesh.

"This is Somo," he heard himself say to the American.

"You know her?" Winslow asked in a skeptical tone.

"We met once. We have mutual friends. You saw her, too, handing us jackets and hats."

Winslow nodded with a grin at the purba. "We owe you for that," he said, then looked back at Shan. "So you're saying she's a-"

"A friend."

Winslow nodded again.

Somo stepped forward and sat beside Shan. "We will find out where he is taken. I know he was in lao gai for many years. He will know how to survive."

"Not if they consider him one of those who helped Tenzin hide. The abbot of Sangchi," he said, trying to get used to the thought of the lanky silent man, the gatherer of yak dung, as one of the most prominent lamas in all Tibet.

"Why would you go to Golmud?" Shan asked her.

"I am on the rolls of the venture as an administrative assistant. I have been reassigned," she said with a narrow smile, eyeing the American uneasily.

"Winslow has helped us," Shan said, and explained how the American had stopped Colonel Lin from arresting them earlier.

The woman nodded slowly, as if she had realized Shan was inviting her to share her secrets. "I asked for the reassignment. It was part of the plan. I am supposed to… I was supposed to get access to the central computer at the base camp to create a personnel file that showed Tenzin to be a worker in the venture. Then arrange for him to be assigned to a camp in the far north, near Mongolia. From there it would have been simple to get him out. Mongolia, then Russia, then Europe and America. He was supposed to meet important people in the West who can help Tibet."

"But the government was looking on the Indian border," Shan said, and fixed the woman with a pointed stare. "It's where Drakte went, isn't it, during those weeks after he took us to the hermitage. He disappeared. He went south to lay a false trail."

Somo looked into her hands a moment, biting her lip as though Shan's words caused her pain. "The one who planned all this, our leader, he said Drakte was the best for such a job. Drakte went to towns in the south with stories of seeing the abbot on the road at night, always farther south. He even had things of the abbot's, and said Tenzin had traded them for food. So the knobs would find a trail of evidence."

"What kind of things?" Shan asked.

"Personal things, objects which anyone investigating would know belonged to him: A pen case. An old book given to the abbot by his mother. A prayer amulet he had been photographed wearing. Tenzin was told nothing from his former life could stay with him, for even though we might disguise him, its possession would betray him."

Shan fingered the ivory rosary in his pocket. Had Drakte kept one thing, perhaps the most precious thing, to return to Tenzin when he left China?

"Then we changed Tenzin," Somo continued. "The way he walked. We had his hair grow long. We taught him mannerisms of the dropka."

"Should have been foolproof," Winslow said.

"Should have," Somo agreed. "But someone found out. Perhaps someone saw him who we didn't think would recognize him. We thought all the searchers would be in the south. We thought he would be safe at that hermitage, and on the caravan."

"Who?" Shan asked. "Who would have seen him in Lhasa, then again while he was fleeing in the changtang? When did he leave Lhasa? Was there a meeting, a conference where someone from the north would have seen him?"

"That Serenity Campaign. There was a big meeting to launch it. The abbot of Sangchi gave a speech, and two days later he disappeared, before the conference had even concluded."

"Colonel Lin," Winslow suggested. "He came to Yapchi, from Lhasa."

Somo gave her head a slight shake, and frowned. "Most of his troops are in the south still, watching out for purbas taking Tenzin across the border. As if Lin wanted to keep our sham alive. He must have come north because of that stone, because he knew it would be returned to the valley. Because he is obsessed with that stone perhaps."

"No," Shan said. "Not because of the stone. No matter what the Tibetans may think of the chenyi deity, to Lin it is only a stone. Drakte took the stone," Shan said, looking at Somo again. "And he had someone else with him." He unfolded the photograph he had taken from Lin's pocket. "This is why Lin was so interested in the stone– because it would lead him to Tenzin."

Somo stared at him with a hard glint, not of surprise, but of assessment, as if trying to decide how many more secrets she dare divulge. "All right. Tenzin took something, something secret about the soldiers, about the 54th Mountain Combat soldiers. Military intelligence."

"Tenzin?" Shan asked. "He's no spy."

"No," Somo agreed. "I don't know what it was. I don't think they planned it, from the way Drakte talked about it. He was angry at Tenzin for increasing the danger to them. Probably Tenzin wanted to help the purbas with something, because the purbas were making possible his escape."

But to Lin, Shan knew, it would still mean the abbot was a spy. It made it personal. Tenzin had shamed Lin, or even worse, might have information that could harm the entire army. "Lin's trying to cover himself," Shan said, the thought reaching his tongue as it crossed his mind. "He never told his superiors. He's trying to recover the missing papers before the damage is done. If the army command suspected military secrets were in the hands of the fugitive abbot, they would be scouring the countryside, erecting roadblocks everywhere."

"But why would Tenzin think it was safe to come to Yapchi today?" Winslow asked.

"He didn't, not necessarily," Shan said. "Jokar said herbs must be gathered in Yapchi Valley for the healing. I should have known. It was a thing the man Tenzin wants to become would do, a thing Lokesh would do without a second thought."

Winslow fixed Shan with a sad gaze. The fugitive abbot had been captured because an ancient medicine lama had asked for herbs to heal an ailing Chinese colonel. The thought somehow reminded Shan of someone else. "Did you go to that durtro like you said, with Gendun and Drakte?" he asked Somo.

Her face tightened, and she nodded. "Herders came, many herders, and said prayers, and talked about what a brave man Drakte was. Gendun stayed afterwards. He said Drakte was having a bad time of things, and he was going back with Shopo to continue the rites. I think they meant for the full ritual." The traditional death rite period was forty-nine days. Somo watched a range of mountains recede in the distance. "There was something… I don't think it meant anything really. But when I was leaving Gendun sought me out. He said we must all learn to understand the dead better. He said to give Shan something, that he had learned something about Drakte." She reached into her pocket and extended a chakpa, one of the bronze sand funnels.

Shan stared at the funnel, struck dumb for a moment by the memory of Gendun teaching him how to use it, then slowly he lifted it from Somo's palm. He examined it carefully, perplexed, then looked inside to see a small slip of paper resting against the inner wall. He slipped the paper out with his finger and read it. He looked up at Somo. "Drakte carried the deity in a blanket," Shan read to his two companions, "but he was learning to unwrap it."

Somo looked at Shan with apology in her eyes, as if she felt she had troubled him with a meaningless message.

"The eye was kept in a little felt blanket," Winslow suggested.

Shan said nothing, but read the paper again, and again. Somo offered an uncertain nod to the American and looked back at the retreating mountains.

"So now what do you do?" Shan asked the woman after several minutes.

Somo did not shift her gaze from the mountains. "When I started from Lhasa three weeks ago, Drakte told me we were doing this to help a Chinese who was going north to help Tibetans. I didn't know about the abbot then, just the stone." She paused and looked at Shan with puzzled eyes. "The abbot and the eye of the deity, in a way they were the same thing."

Shan nodded. "The purbas' help with the eye was just a cover, a way to get Tenzin north in secret. Who would have looked for him on a salt caravan?" He looked up into the woman's face and somehow knew they were sharing the same thought. Drakte had died to warn them, to make sure Tenzin stayed free. Somo was not giving up on Tenzin.

"I am going to the computer as soon as we arrive in Golmud," Somo stated, "in the middle of the night. I will still make Tenzin an employee, under the false name we devised."

"But he's gone," Winslow said.

"It's still my assignment," Somo said in a voice that had grown distant. "And after it's over, whatever happens, I am going to find out about Drakte's killer."

"I think," Winslow said, studying first Shan, then Somo, "it's not over until you find the killer."

They watched the landscape in silence again.

"You can get into the electronic records?" Winslow asked after a long time.

"At university, they made sure I had advanced computer training before returning to teach Tibetan children. With chalk and slate."

Winslow explained about Melissa Larkin, and they spoke together for an hour about the mysteries that had been woven together at Yapchi.

"Did Drakte know that man Chao who was murdered?" Shan asked. Somehow he already knew the answer.

"Yes," Somo said readily. "He was a Tibetan. Many people don't know that, because of the name he took."

"And you knew him also?"

"A month ago Drakte and I were planning to spend two days together by Lamtso. We had been talking about making a family together," she announced in a matter-of-fact tone that caused Shan to turn away, embarrassed, then she paused and looked out the rear of the truck. "But instead, he asked me to go with him to Amdo town, because he had discovered an old friend there we had to meet. He said there would always be time for us to go to Lamtso," she said in a tight voice. "We met at an old stable being used as a garage, and we sat on a bench and ate cold dumplings with his friend, whose name was different when Drakte knew him as a boy. They had me sit in the middle, like a referee."

"What did Chao do? How did he act?" Had it all been a trap to capture Drakte? Shan wondered.

"He was scared. He asked if Drakte knew Director Tuan, like he was warning Drakte. But Drakte just laughed about Tuan. They did not discuss things that were dangerous. Just talk about life on the changtang and things from when they were young. It was just old friends meeting again, that's all. That Chao, he embraced Drakte when we parted and said he was sorry."

"About what?"

"Just that he was sorry. About everything I guess."

"Did Drakte have that ledger with him?" Shan asked.

Somo shook her head. "But afterwards he worked on it all night, because he said he was going to meet with Chao again. I thought at first it was something he was doing for the Lotus Book, to record how the district is so stricken by poverty. It includes every village, every farm, every herding family in Norbu district. Signed by the head of each family."

"The district," Shan said. "Not the township."

Somo nodded. "The Religious Affairs district. The Norbu district that Tuan heads for Religious Affairs."

From a pocket Somo produced a slip of yellow paper and handed it to Shan. "I nearly forgot. Drakte had this in his boot. I keep trying to understand it. I think it came from Chao, but not when I was with them."

It appeared to be a payroll record, with one word handwritten at the top. Dorje, it said, followed by a dash, like it was an address, or person. The dorje was a Buddhist symbol, the small scepter-like object that was sometimes called the thunderbolt to symbolize the teachings of Buddha. Below the name were two columns of handwritten numbers, the first a list of twelve identification numbers, the second a group of twenty. Bureau of Religious Affairs, Amdo, someone had written under the first column, with a check by each identification number in the column. Beside the two top sets of numbers of the first column was written Director Tuan, and below it the single Chinese word wo. It meant I or me. It could mean, Shan realized, Deputy Director Chao. Under the second column was written Public Security.

"It's not his writing," Somo said. "Not Drakte's. It must be Chao's. I asked some questions," she said pointedly. "The head of Public Security in Amdo town was reassigned months ago. No replacement was named. Since Director Tuan used to be the head of Public Security here, he offered to be the interim supervisor. He began to consolidate things. Including payroll."

"You mean the knobs here are being paid by Director Tuan of Religious Affairs?"

Somo bit her lower lip as she nodded.

Gyalo had warned about knobs who did not look like knobs. It explained why the howlers in white, military-style shirts all looked like Public Security.

"And one more thing: it looks like payroll data for the knobs in the district. But only fifteen knobs are known."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean the purbas watch the knobs in Amdo town. There have been fifteen stationed out of there for years. We checked with those who clean the barracks. Fifteen based in Amdo, traveling with Tuan sometimes. So there's another five somewhere else. Working in secret."

In secret. The five could be anywhere. They could be wearing robes at Norbu. He remembered the camp Dremu had found above the Plain of Flowers, after the meadow had been burned. Had it been knobs? Shan extended the paper back toward Somo, but she raised her palm to decline, as if the paper frightened her now.

The truck bounced and slid along the rough track until it finally reached the north-south highway and picked up speed, then climbed and descended, and climbed again, through rough, barren terrain, along what Shan knew was one of the highest roadways in the world. He slept, and when he woke they were traveling through a snowbound landscape. After dark, past the snow, the truck stopped at a cluster of rundown mudbrick buildings for gas. The driver filled a thermos with hot water, threw in a handful of tea, and left it in the rear of the truck with two tin mugs and a bag of apples.

Shan slept fitfully, starting awake each time a faster vehicle overtook them. Heavy trucks and buses frequented the road. Twice they passed army convoys which had halted on the shoulder.

Several hours after sunset the air became thick and acrid. Dim sulfur-colored streetlights appeared and the truck began weaving around men and women on bicycles, its horn blaring. They passed blocks of dingy grey buildings and factories belching thick smoke. Shan watched out the back of the truck, standing now, holding onto the frame of the cargo bay. It was China, or at least the China that hundreds of millions of Chinese knew.

"Godforsaken place, Golmud," Winslow observed.

Shan said nothing. God-forsaken perhaps, but it was the closest he had been to China in over five years. There were other smells he noticed mixed with the factory smog. Sesame oil, chili peppers, coriander, fried pork, ginger. A woman rode past on a bicycle, holding a bamboo pole on which were skewered four roasted ducks. A man rode by in the opposite direction, balancing a long rolled carpet on his handlebars. An aged woman on a bench tended a brazier with little spits of roasted crab apples. For a moment Shan fought an urge to just go sit with her, and smell the intermingled diesel and spices, the scent of modern China.

Thirty minutes after leaving the city, under a brilliant floodlight mounted on a tall metal pole they turned onto a broad gravel road wide enough for four trucks. Idled vehicles began to appear on the right side, dozens of vehicles: dumptrucks, bulldozers, towing trucks, truck trailers, cement mixers. It was a huge parking lot for heavy equipment. More floodlights on poles appeared every hundred feet, and they entered what appeared to be a parking lot for trailers identical to those used at Yapchi. Dozens of trailers, over a hundred, Shan estimated, in orderly rows, a city of trailers. As the truck slowed he swung his head out and looked forward. There was nothing else except four enormous cinderblock buildings facing each other, creating a huge square of gravel perhaps two hundred yards on each side.