Текст книги "Bone Mountain"

Автор книги: Eliot Pattison

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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 39 страниц)

The truck stopped at the edge of the empty, open square and the driver, after rapping hard on the rear window of the cab, walked away, stretching his arms over his head, without a word to them. They climbed out cautiously, peering about the empty compound. Shan took a few hesitant steps toward the only building whose windows were lit, gravel crunching loudly under his boots. It was one o'clock in the morning.

In the dim orange glow of the sulfur lamps, with a gibbous moon rising over it, the huge yard had the air of a stark, sturdy temple compound in repose. There was a strange vibration in the air, a beating, as of a distant drum. Then suddenly one of the doors of the building he was facing opened and loud rock-and-roll music poured into the yard. Two men staggered into the night, holding onto each other to stay upright, waving energetically at the new arrivals then turning toward the huge complex of trailers.

Shan stood, exploring the strange, unexpected feeling that rose within. He had entered a different world, or at least a world he had not known for years. He had last seen drunken men, had last heard such music, had last walked in the night under such lights, in Beijing, in his prior incarnation.

Winslow tapped him on the shoulder as though he suspected Shan of napping on his feet, then pulled him toward the door the men had exited. They entered a short hallway, lined in unpainted plywood, illuminated by a single naked, intensely bright bulb. The walls on both sides held long bulletin boards which overflowed with papers of many shapes, sizes, and colors, and in several languages. Shan glanced at them in confusion. Monday Night, one said in English, African Queen, Bring your own Leeches. Another said, in Chinese, All Dogs Found in Trailers Will Be Donated to the Kitchen. Lost, One Monkey, the top of another said in English and French. A poster for the Foreign Affairs Branch of the Public Security Bureau reminded foreigners to strictly observe the terms of their entry visas. An announcement in the style of a banner stated that all unassigned workers would be expected to assist in assembling platforms for the upcoming May Day celebration. There was even a bulletin from the Bureau of Religious Affairs reminding venture workers that any religious artifacts found in the field were to be surrendered to the people's government.

The corridor led to a darkened hall that ran the length of the long building, with many doors on either side. Directly across from them was a door marked Infirmary, in Chinese and English. Twenty feet away on the opposite side was a set of open double doors, through which red light flooded out, flickering in time to the music. The sound was almost unbearably loud to Shan, but no other door, no other place in the compound seemed to show any sign of activity. With a mock bow, Winslow gestured them through the doors. Somo stared at her feet self-consciously, and Shan saw her clutch at a piece of turquoise that had appeared in her hand, her remembrance from Drakte, then she swallowed hard and followed Winslow into the bar.

The room, nearly sixty feet long and perhaps twenty-five wide, was jammed with people. No one gave them more than a glance as they worked their way toward an empty table at the rear. At one end was a bar, constructed of unpainted timber, with two men standing in front of shelves stacked with bottles of beer and hard liquor– not just the Chinese mainstays, but Western whiskeys, Russian vodka, French brandy, British gin, and, conspicuously displayed under a small spotlight, a bottle of hejie jiu, lizard wine from Guangxi, complete with a dead lizard suspended in the bottle. Men and women, many in green jackets, were raucously ordering drinks at the bar. On a stage at one corner a huge machine with a television screen displayed video images of women in fields of flowers and English words scrolling across the bottom of the screen, with a small ball bouncing over the words. A stout Han man wearing a purple silk shirt sang into a microphone, standing close to the screen, swaying, staring intensely, expectantly, as if he were about to jump into the field to join the women. A small crowd milled about the stage, some jeering, some calling words of encouragement to the man.

Two of the walls were plastered with posters, most of them of handsome men and women with images of martial arts, beautiful mountains, sleek cars, or other handsome people in negligible bathing suits behind them. Each had captions of what Shan assumed were movies, in English, Chinese, or French. He stared at them a moment, vaguely remembering that once he had attended movies, but he couldn't recall where, or when.

At the opposite end of the room where the light was dimmer, there were two tattered sofas and a dozen high stools. Several young women were perched on the stools, as though on display, all wearing heavy makeup, tight low-cut dresses, elaborately styled hair and high boots of brightly colored vinyl. Half a dozen Westerners sat at a table near the stage, burly men with big hands, four of them smoking cigars, one with his head resting in his palms, elbows on the table, as if asleep. With the Westerners was a well-groomed middle-aged Han man wearing a blue dress shirt, who watched the man on the stage with an uneasy smile.

"Mai xiao nu," Winslow announced with a sense of wonder as they sat down, staring back at the overdressed women. It meant women selling smiles. "Mai xiao nu," he repeated with a grin, as if he found the words amusing. When Somo blushed he shrugged apologetically, then declared that he would get them soft drinks and strode toward the bar. Somo looked at Shan, biting her lower lip. She stood and stepped purposefully toward the Chinese man sitting with the Westerners. She leaned over him a moment; he looked up with what Shan thought was relief, offered a gesture of farewell to his companions, and walked with Somo to the door. They stood and spoke for less than a minute until, with a worried glance toward Shan, she followed the man down the corridor.

Shan studied the strange collection of people in the room. His eyes began to sting from the tobacco smoke. A man nearby began belching repeatedly as his companions applauded. Shan could not shake the feeling he was being watched. What had Jenkins called the headquarters camp? Hell on wheels.

Winslow appeared a moment later with three red cans of American soda with a Chinese label, and the two sat uneasily for ten minutes before Somo reappeared with the man in the blue shirt, who distributed key rings with plastic tags like hotel keys to Shan and Somo. Each tag held a letter of the English alphabet and a number. The man introduced himself to Winslow as the administrative manager, and explained that Winslow would be accommodated in the special housing for distinguished visitors. Shan and Winslow exchanged a nervous glance. They were being split up. The American frowned but, as the manager turned and gestured him toward the door, he rose to follow the man. "In the morning," he said uneasily, and soon disappeared out the door with the manager.

"There are separate quarters for female workers," Somo announced unhappily as she downed her drink and pocketed her key.

"I will sleep in that truck," Shan suggested.

"No," Somo said nervously. "It could be moved, even driven to some other camp. And I saw a security patrol in the hallway. Not police or soldiers, just men in brown jackets. But if you're found without a worker's card you'll be taken into Golmud, or worse. They have trouble with thieves infiltrating the camp."

Five minutes later he was wandering along the dark rows of trailers. At the end of each row was a dimly lit sign with a letter. Each trailer had a huge number painted over its center door. He found his assigned trailer, unlocked the door, stepped inside, and found himself standing between two long rows of metal bunkbeds, half of which were occupied with sleeping figures. Two men sat on a cot at one end playing mah jhong by the light of a flashlight. Shan moved in the opposite direction and found an empty bunk at the end of the trailer. He was asleep seconds after his head touched the pillow.

It seemed only moments later when someone began pushing one of his feet. He woke with a start, remembering Somo's warning about the security patrols. Sunlight poured through the small metal-framed windows of the trailer.

"Breakfast stops in ten minutes, buddy," declared a young Han Chinese man at his bedside. "Sorry," he said as he saw Shan's nervous reaction. "If you wind up waiting in line most of the day for a job assignment you won't be able to eat until tonight." The man studied Shan uncertainly, wiped his thin, wispy moustache, and shrugged.

Shan mumbled his thanks and followed the man outside, warily studying the long alley between the rows of trailers before stepping beside the young Chinese.

"I saw a truck by the ops center," the Han said. "You must have come in late. From Tsaidam?" he asked, referring to the huge oil field in western Qinghai, one of the most famous in all China.

"Yapchi," Shan said.

The man glanced at him in surprise. "You asked to rotate out of Yapchi? Are you crazy? I hear there's going to be big bonuses there. American," he added. "I love Americans. Hamburgers. Las Vegas."

They arrived at the same big building Shan and his friends had been in the night before, but entered now at the opposite end, stepping directly into a huge messhall. A gust of humid air poured over him as the door closed, carrying with it a melange of scents: Pickled cabbage. Bacon. Cheese. Black pepper. Cigarette smoke. Eggs. Strong black tea. Fried rice. Coffee. Marinated fish.

Shan wandered around the room until he spotted Winslow sitting at a long table with over a dozen Western men and women, most of them younger than Winslow. A large black box on the table blared loud music. A young blond man with a ponytail pounded out the rhythm with two spoons on his plastic plate. Beside him a thick-set, square-jawed woman with short brunette hair played solitaire. Three others, including two of the men Shan had seen by the stage the night before, were studying a map, unrolled on the table. One was nursing a mug of coffee, the other a thick cigar.

Shan sat beside Winslow, who quietly reported that Somo had not yet appeared. The American gestured toward a line of workers at the side of the hall where attendants in white aprons hovered over steaming metal trays of food. Shan shook his head, and the American handed him a piece of cold toast from his own plate. Shan accepted the toast and reached for a Chinese newspaper near the end of the table. It was published in Golmud, dated just the day before. He quickly scanned the headlines. The authorities were closing in on the reviled Tiger, the reactionary wanted for murdering a Religious Affairs official in Amdo town. Large rewards were offered to citizens who assisted in his capture. A companion article explained that the effort to take the Tiger was a two-pronged campaign against such reactionaries, the second element being the separate search for the abbot of Sangchi, whom reactionaries working for the Tiger had kidnapped to steal him away to the Dalai Cult.

"Mostly Europeans," Winslow reported in a low voice, in Tibetan. "None of them has been here longer than a week. All in from other assignments. Most of them about to rotate out from home base."

Shan surveyed the men and women at the table. They seemed to be studiously ignoring Winslow.

"They have pointed out that of all the foreign countries represented in the venture, the only embassy that has ever challenged the venture on anything is the American."

"You mean your questions about Miss Larkin?"

"No. Environmental studies. Somebody else from the embassy came a month ago, saying the venture was not properly assessing environmental impacts. These engineers say the venture could block further investment by the American partners if we're not careful. There's lots of capital available elsewhere with no strings attached."

The man nearest Winslow pushed his chair back and lifted his tray. "I'll be sure to brush off my tuxedo for next time we dine, Mr. Ambassador," the man said in English, with an exaggerated bow of his head. He studied Shan a moment and turned back to Winslow. "Don't take any shit off of them," he added in a tone that was almost apologetic. "Give one of them an ear and you'll have a hundred hounding you. Every damned one expects us to help with a visa to move to the States."

"I have never expected to depart the worker's paradise," Shan said slowly, in English, fixing the man with a steady stare.

The man returned his gaze uncertainly, then broke into a grin. He looked from Shan to a table at the far corner of the room before grinning at Winslow. "Glad Comrade Zhu has his team on the case," he said, then hurried away.

Winslow and Shan exchanged a worried glance, and Shan found himself slowly surveying the messhall. Workers were rapidly filing out of the chamber. Several of the aproned staff wheeled food carts through a set of double doors while others began wiping tables with rags from buckets that reeked of ammonia. But near a door that opened to the interior of the operations center a slender man with hooded eyes, wearing a stylish brown nylon jacket, leaned against the wall, repeatedly glancing at them as he spoke into a portable radio. Shan rose, slowly, without fully standing, to look toward the corner where the American had glanced. The entire table was occupied by men and women in brown jackets. With a pang of fear he recognized the sleek man sitting at the head of the table, gesturing emphatically as the others listened, as if he were holding court. Special Projects Director Zhu.

Shan ducked down and stared at the table, evoking a quiet curse from Winslow as he explained what he had seen.

"I was wondering," Shan said as he calmed himself. "Why Larkin would come here just to access the computer? Why not do it from Yapchi?"

Winslow shrugged, watching in the direction of the distant table. "Secrecy. Maybe a better internet connection. They just have that little satellite phone there. Or maybe that's not why she came. Maybe she just happened to check her e-mail while she was here."

"But she came in secret, when she was supposed to be in the field. A two-day journey, here and back. It was important to her. What else is here? What else does this base do?" As if in reply a heavy truck laden with supplies tied under canvas covers pulled past the windows of the messhall.

A quarter hour later they stood at the back of the long building opposite the operations center. Much of the rear of the structure was open, consisting of ten oversized garage bays, several holding heavy trucks undergoing repair. A long loading dock lined the remainder of the building, at which several cargo trucks of varying sizes were being loaded. They climbed the dock, but as Winslow took a step toward the warehouse, Shan put a hand on his arm. "Perhaps we should just watch a moment," he suggested.

"What for?" Winslow asked, casting nervous glances about the facility.

"For the one thing," Shan said.

"One thing?"

Shan gazed intently at the warehouse workers who were supervising the loading. "When I was starting my career in Beijing I worked with an old investigator who said that despite what I had been told in my training at the university the easiest part of the job was knowing who to ask, and where. He said the hard part was inviting those you questioned to give you more than you ask, for if you know what to ask you already have most of the answer. He said there was always one thing in any situation that would open a person up, one thing that was the essence, not the one truth but the one lever to the truth."

"Sort of like the zen of interrogation," Winslow quipped, anxiously watching the workers. Shan asked the American to wait near the door and he slipped into the shadows behind one of the high stacks of crates that lined the warehouse floor.

A few minutes later they entered the warehouse together, Shan holding a clipboard stuffed with papers, Winslow wearing a worn green cap with the symbol of an oil derrick on it.

They stood near the center of the huge open warehouse space, Winslow with his hands on his hips, wearing an impatient expression, an unlit cigar hanging from his lips, Shan looking forlorn. In less than a minute a balding Han man wearing the blue shirt that seemed to indicate senior administrative personnel hurried to their side. Shan had watched the man from the shadows, had seen the way he had obsequiously watched three Westerners who entered the warehouse and darted to assist them, ignoring all else, even the man who had helped Somo the night before, the Chinese administrative manager.

"The accounts for the field teams at Yapchi are out of order," Shan sighed, with a long, exasperated glance at Winslow. Winslow's task, Shan had told the American, was to say nothing, look irritated, and give no clue of understanding Mandarin.

"Surely not," the man in the coveralls stated, nervously looking at the American. He wore an American-style baseball cap, black, with an orange bird on its front. Shan felt guilty about playing to such an obvious, even sad, weakness, but the one thing that most of the venture workers seemed to be obsessed with was making contact with foreigners, for help with immigration.

"I told him," Shan said, "these things are very complex. Multiple deliveries. Sensitive equipment that may be shipped directly to the camp. Sometimes boxes with food supplies and field equipment get confused."

The warehouse manager examined Winslow carefully. The American offered a forced, impatient grin, then glared at Shan.

Shan retreated a step, as if expecting to be hit. "Please," he said in a plaintive tone. "He's been to Yapchi already. He has their records for verification. He's American."

The man nervously motioned them toward a computer terminal on a table in a corner of the warehouse. Moments later he had a screen displayed that read Yapchi: Supply Balances. Shan looked at the screen with a satisfied smile. Running the petroleum venture was as bureaucratic and disorganized as running the army.

The man tapped a few more keys and a subheading appeared: Field Teams. "They all have the same equipment," the man said, pointing at a column on the left side. "Team One," it said. Metallic water bottles, twelve, the listing began. Tent, four man, one. Sleeping bags, four. Butane cooking stoves, one. Fuel cylinders, eight. Rations, sixty meals. Shan quickly scanned the rest of the list. Ropes, axes, mineral hammers, seismic explosive charges. The four-member teams were equipped for five days in the field. "Tell him I know baseball," the manager urged Shan. "They play tapes of baseball games one night a week. Baltimore Orioles," he added in a hopeful tone.

Shan gave an impatient nod in reply. "But one of these field teams left behind some of their equipment."

"Which team number?"

Shan gestured toward Winslow. "What team do you think? The one headed by the American."

Strangely, the man seemed to deflate. "Ah," he said slowly, "Melissa." His eyes clouded.

"You knew Miss Larkin?"

"Sure. I mean-" the man searched their faces warily as if trying to assess how slippery the ground had become. "She brings things for us when she visits. Fossils sometimes. Pretty pink quartz. Once some American sweet biscuits. She is…" he studied their faces again, then fixed his gaze on the computer, "easy to remember." When he felt Shan's inquisitive stare, he sighed and continued in a more distant voice. "Once when she was here there was a big storm and the electricity was gone. No one could work. Most people went to the operations center and drank all day. But Miss Larkin, she made a fire here, in a big iron bucket," he explained, pointing to the center of the concrete floor. "Some of us sat around it and told stories. She taught us American songs that day. Row, Row, Row Your Boat," he said in English, having difficulty with the r's. "Jingle Bells. Oh Susannah."

"But that last time she was here, she wanted something special, didn't she?" Shan suggested. "She left food supplies at Yapchi because she had to carry something else."

The man tapped a few more keys at the computer, then sat down heavily on a nearby stool. A new screen appeared, showing resupply orders for the Yapchi camp. "She said she didn't have time to do all the paperwork." He looked around the warehouse, suddenly wary not of Shan and Winslow but of the shadows beyond them. "Said no one would miss them, that months would go by before anyone would ask for them and I could reorder by then. I said only six, but she insisted on taking all twelve."

"Twelve what?"

The man winced. "It didn't make sense. I still think about it sometimes. I still don't understand." He looked into Shan's face with a pleading expression. "I'll have replacements by next month."

"Twelve what?" Shan repeated.

"Dye markers," the man whispered. "Used to mark currents, or measure the flow of water. Where we usually work, in the new fields, it's almost like a desert. The markers were all covered with dust. I reported that they had all expired," he said, as if once he had decided to confide in Shan, as a fellow Han who shared the burden of dealing with Americans, he had to tell it all, "too old to use. I didn't check. Probably true," he added quickly.

"You just did your job. She was a team leader, after all," Shan said and looked at the screen. There was a line blinking at the bottom of the screen, the last entry under Larkin's name. Replenish, it said, and referenced a date. The date was tomorrow. He pointed at the line of text.

"Resupply," the man said hesitantly. Shan leaned over and moved the cursor to the line and clicked the mouse. A new list appeared, with the same date, and map coordinates. Butane fuel cylinders. Blankets. Five hundred feet of rope, and seismic charges. Four cases of seismic charges.

As Shan studied the screen a chill crept down his spine.

"Why, if it's for Larkin's team," he asked slowly, "would you keep this in the system?"

The color drained from the man's face and he stared at the screen a long time before answering. "I don't put the supply assignments in the system, just assemble the supplies for the orders that appear on the screen. That team may still be working. I hear they haven't found her body," the man said in a subdued, worried voice. Then, as he saw Shan's intense interest in the screen, he stood in front of the monitor.

"She asked you to keep the replenish order in the system when she was here," Shan stated. The man had mixed his tenses in speaking of Larkin, using the present tense sometimes even though he had obviously heard of her death.

"No, it's a mistake," he groaned, "just a mistake for this to be in this system. It doesn't mean anything."

"You mean she asked for a special resupply and later someone asked you to take it off?"

The man looked at Winslow with a pleading expression now. "A good woman," he said in broken English. "Row, row, row your boat," he said with a forced smile. "Baltimore Orioles."

"You mean the Office of Special Projects," Shan said.

The words brought a cloud to the manager's face. "He said take her listings off our screens. I must have forgotten this piece."

"Special Director Zhu said take off the resupply request?" Shan asked. "Cancel it?"

The man in the blue shirt hunched his shoulders forward, and seemed to draw into himself, getting smaller. "Not cancel it," the man whispered to his feet, looking more frightened than ever. "Just take it off our screens." He stepped in front of the computer and turned to face the entrance to the warehouse, as though guarding the screen. Or hiding it.

"You mean Zhu found out the replenishment order was still in the system," Shan said slowly, glancing at Winslow, who was busily writing down the map coordinates, "and he said continue with it. But he is taking over the resupply assignment?"

The man's voice had grown hoarse. "Like the rest of us, I guess. He hopes she still lives."

But no, Shan realized as he hurried Winslow out of the building, it was because Zhu hoped to make sure she didn't.

"How could-" Winslow began when Shan had explained his suspicion.

"The dye markers," Shan explained. "We saw the dye markers being used the day before we saw Zhu in the mountains. He told us she had been killed a week before. He filed reports stating as much. But he was lying. She was in the mountains, near us, just the day before. No one else was using the markers. No one else had any markers. Zhu reported her killed to make sure no one else would interfere."

"Interfere with what?"

"I don't know. I think Zhu is going to deliver those supplies. He reported her dead. What if he lied, what if he wanted everyone to give up on her so he could find her? Zhu, and maybe Public Security, had decided she's dangerous. What if it was because he wanted to make her dead now that everyone had accepted the lie that she was dead? Make her dead now, or take her somewhere for interrogation. She's a ghost now. Zhu can do anything and no one would know."

Winslow stared at Shan. "Impossible," he said, but Shan didn't see disbelief in the American's eyes. He saw cold fury, and fear, and a glimmer of helplessness.

Shan surveyed the compound as they walked around the perimeter of the square, stopping by the vehicles they passed to watch the reflections in the window glass. "We can't leave Somo." The man from the dining hall, the one in the brown jacket, now wearing sunglasses, was two hundred feet away, standing by a parked truck, speaking in low tones into his little radio. Across the compound Shan saw two more men in brown jackets, listening to radios, briskly walking toward them now. An open vehicle, a jeep, pulled up beside the men. Zhu was in the front passenger seat, wearing his sunglasses, slapping a knob's truncheon against his palm.

"She has people who take care of her," Winslow said. "Purbas."

"She came with us," Shan said. "We're being watched. Her friends will pick her up eventually. With Tenzin arrested, she can do no more here."

But Shan was wrong. Five minutes later a heavy dump truck moved slowly across the yard, raising a thick plume of dust. It turned so that its path took it between them and their followers. It slowed as it approached. Someone was standing on its wide running board.

"Christ, it's her," Winslow gasped, and instantly the two men darted through the dust cloud to the truck. Somo motioned them onto the board and they leapt, landing on either side of the woman, Shan holding onto the side mirror, Winslow the handle used for climbing into the high cab.

Moments later they were beside the huge lot of idled equipment they had passed the night before. The truck slowed and Somo motioned for them to jump, following them a moment later.

"Why not stay on, get in back?" Winslow asked, brushing the dust from his sleeves.

Somo pointed to the main gate, where the truck was coming to a halt. Two army trucks were parked there, a squad of soldiers deployed on either side of the gate beside several men in brown jackets.

"Checkpoint. Effective this morning, everyone in and out of the base has to be cleared by the army. The 54th Mountain Combat Brigade," she added tersely, as she turned and led them into the maze of equipment, finding refuge behind the lowered blade of a huge bulldozer. They sat in the shadow as she quickly explained that Larkin had indeed been at the base in the past month, when she was supposed to be in the mountains above Yapchi, and she hadn't used the computer just for a few electronic messages to her office in the United States. The American geologist had used the only terminal in the entire venture that had a link to her company's mainframe computer, and for two hours, timed to be in the middle of the night at the company's headquarters in America, she had fed geologic data into the computer.

"But why?" Winslow asked. "She can't have a secret deposit of oil. The oil belongs to the venture. She knows that. What could be so secret? So urgent?"

"More importantly," Shan said, "what could an American geologist lost in the mountains possibly be doing that would cause Zhu to want her dead?"

"Modeling," Somo reported in a puzzled tone. "That's all anyone knows. That's what the big American computer is used for. Modeling geologic data."

"But what the hell is so secret?" Winslow pressed. "She works for an oil company. And why the computer back home?"

"I asked," Somo explained. "Seismic data from the field is inputed and the computer extrapolates mineral deposits, using thousands of calculations and data about known fields. Predicts underground geologic structures. Identifying patterns of mineral tracers to point to big ore or oil bodies." Somo shrugged. "Some geologists use the computer more than others. Larkin had used it before, often. And oil companies are secretive. They don't want others knowing what they're finding," she added.

Shan recalled Jenkins's description of the American woman. Larkin was a perfectionist. "But she would have to get permission," he suggested. "Someone would have had to approve it."

Somo sighed. "Yes and no. There are access codes that have to be fed into the computer to start the program. Entering the codes means you have permission."

"And Larkin had the codes."

"Larkin used code numbers registered in Mr. Jenkins name. But he was at Yapchi at the time."

"Maybe he had approved it," Winslow said.

"Or maybe not," Shan suggested. He looked at Somo. "Why would they speak so freely with you about the computer? You're a stranger."

Somo frowned. "Not to everyone."

"Meaning other purbas?" Shan asked.

Somo did not reply.

The roar of an engine suddenly erupted through the stillness of the equipment yard. A grey utility truck sped by.

"They're looking for us," Shan said.

"We're going," Winslow said. "Back to Yapchi."