Текст книги "The Skull Mantra"

Автор книги: Eliot Pattison

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Tsomo gave a small laugh of victory, then rose and poured Shan more tea. "They say in parts of China it is impossible to separate the Tao from Buddha's way."

"When I lived in Beijing I visited a secret temple every day. On one side of the altar sat a figure of Lao Tze. On the other sat Buddha."

Tsomo's eyes grew round again. "Things always seem so far away from the top of a mountain. We have much to learn."

The moment was magical. No one spoke. The sound of the tsingha grew closer. A boy appeared, the small cymbals dangling in front of him. Behind him came two women, nuns, one carrying a tray with two covered bowls and the second a large pot of tea. They set the objects before the altar, and the monk who knelt there, his back still to Shan, began a ritual of blessing.

Shan knew he had heard the voice before, but there were so few monks he knew outside the 404th. Had he seen this man at Saskya? At Khartok, perhaps? He strained to see the man through the dim light as the nuns and monks spoke in turns, ceremonial words that Shan did not understand. When it was over the monk at the altar stood and straightened, then turned to face Shan.

"Are you ready?" he asked. It was Trinle.

They studied each other in silence. Shan felt strangely overwhelmed. For some reason he felt unable to ask how Trinle had spirited himself out of the camp, or why he had laboriously masqueraded as a pilgrim to reach Yerpa. Instead he followed them, Trinle and Tsomo and the two nuns, as they began climbing still another set of steep stairs, a narrow twisting passage worn, like the others, from centuries of use. After a minute's hard climb they reached a landing. The stairs continued ahead, but a dimly lit passage led to the left, toward the heart of the mountain. Along its sides several heavy wooden doors could be seen before the passage curved out of sight.

The group continued up the stairs, climbing in silence for at least five minutes. Twice Shan had to stop and lean against the wall, not from fatigue but from a strange overwhelming sense of passing through something, of straining against a barrier. He seemed to be hearing something but there were no sounds. He seemed to be seeing swarms of shadows shifting on the wall but there was only one steady lamp, carried far ahead. It was as though each step took them not toward another part of the mountain but toward another world. Each time he paused, Trinle was waiting with his serene smile.

They reached a landing with a thick wooden door, intricately carved with faces of protective demons and fastened with a heavy wrought-iron latch. Tsomo waited for them to gather on the landing and form a single-file procession, then opened the door, and led the way into the chamber with a low prayer.

There was no one inside. It was a sparse, square room, perhaps thirty feet to a side, furnished with one rough-hewn table and two chairs, a large iron brazier for holding coals, and several shelves of manuscripts. One wall was covered with an intricate mural of the life of Buddha. The opposite wall was of cedar planks, with a central wooden panel that seemed to match the door but it had no hinges or latches. It was held fast with huge hand-wrought bolts, fastened with nuts nearly the size of Shan's fist. On the floor beside it was one of the illuminated manuscripts, just below a black rectangular panel, perhaps ten inches high and twenty inches long.

Trinle silently lit more butter lamps and turned to Shan. "Do you know the term gomchen?" he asked, as casually as if they were together in their hut at the 404th. "It is little used these days."

Shan shook his head.

"A hermit of hermits. A living Buddha, on a lifetime hermitage," Trinle said.

"It was the Second who decided the gomchen had to be protected," Tsomo continued. "A sacred trust. A small remote holy place had to be selected, to shelter his home so deeply that the secret would always be kept."

"The Second?" Shan asked in confusion.

"The Second Dalai Lama."

"But that was nearly five hundred years ago."

"Yes. There have been fourteen Dalai Lamas. But only nine of our gomchen." Trinle's voice, almost a whisper, was filled with uncharacteristic pride.

Tsomo was at the manuscript now. He opened it to a page marked with a strip of silk. The serene smile returned to his face as he read.

The nuns uncovered the tray and set bowls of tsampa and tea beside the manuscript. It wasn't a black panel on the wall, Shan realized. It was a hole in the wall, an access to a room beyond. He remembered the small solitary window high in the face of the cliff.

"You care for a hermit here," he said in a whisper.

Trinle put his finger to his lips. "Not a hermit. The gomchen," he said, and silently watched as Tsomo and the nuns prepared the food. When they were done, Trinle joined them in kneeling on the floor and prostrating themselves toward the cell, chanting as they did so.

No one spoke until they had climbed down the long flight of stairs and reentered the small chapel where Shan had discovered Trinle.

"It is hard to explain," Trinle said. "The Great Fifth, he said the gomchen was like one brilliant diamond buried in a vast mountain. Our abbot, when I was young, said the gomchen was all that was trying to be inside us, without the burden of wanting."

"You said there was a trust. A gompa that protects the gomchen."

"It has always been our great honor."

Shan looked up, confused. "But this place. It is not exactly a gompa."

"No. Not Yerpa. Nambe gompa."

Shan stared. "But Nambe gompa is gone." Choje had been the abbot of Nambe gompa. "Destroyed by army planes."

"Ah yes," Trinle said with his serene smile. "The stone walls were destroyed. But Nambe is not those old walls. We still exist. We still have our sacred duty to Yerpa."

Shan, numbed by Trinle's announcement, thought of Choje back at the 404th, performing his own sacred duty to protect Yerpa. He became aware that Tsomo was sitting beside him. "He writes very beautifully, when he is not meditating," Tsomo said. "About the evolution of the soul."

Shan remembered the manuscript in the antechamber. The gomchen communicated with them by writing religious tracts in the manuscript. "How long has it been?" Shan asked, still awed. "Since the bolts were tightened."

Trinle seemed hard-pressed to answer. "Time is not one of his dimensions," he said. "Last year he recorded a conversation with the Second Dali Lama. As if he were there, as if it had just taken place."

"But in years," Shan persisted. "When did he-"

"Sixty-one years ago," Tsomo said. A flash of joy lit his eyes.

"It was a very different world," Shan observed reverently.

"It still is. For him. He does not know. It is one of the rules. Outside is irrelevant. He only considers Buddhahood."

"At night," Tsomo said with a strangely longing tone. "He can watch the stars."

"You mean he doesn't know about…" Shan struggled to find the words.

"The troubles of the secular world?" Trinle offered. "No. They come and go. There has always been suffering. There have always been invaders. The Mongolians. The Chinese, several times. Even the British. Invasions pass. They do not affect our good fortune."

"Good fortune?" Shan asked, his voice breaking with emotion.

Trinle seemed genuinely surprised at Shan's question. "To have been able to pass the current incarnation in this holy land." He studied Shan. "The suffering of our people is unimportant to the work of the gomchen," Trinle said with new concern in his voice as he studied Shan. It was as though he felt a need to calm his visitor. "He must not be burdened with the world. That is why there was so much concern, the first time you met Tsomo."

"When I met Tsomo?"

"Consultations were made. Had he been contaminated? we asked."

"If it is unimportant inside, it must be kept unimportant outside, I told them," Tsomo offered.

Suddenly, with painful clarity, Shan understood. "He could die soon, the gomchen."

"At night we can hear him coughing," Trinle said heavily. "There is blood sometimes in his basin. We offer more blankets. He will not use them. We must be ready. Tsomo is the tenth."

The announcement sent a shiver down Shan's spine. He stared, speechless, at the vibrant, wise youth who soon would be locked into the stone forever. Tsomo returned his stare with a broad smile.

They walked Shan back to the library where Yeshe, still wide-eyed, was poring over the manuscripts. As Trinle and Tsomo joined Yeshe, Gendun appeared at the door.

"I believe Prosecutor Jao was killed to protect Yerpa," Shan said abruptly, before they entered the room.

"The prosecutor had many enemies," the old monk observed.

"I mean, I believe his murder was committed on the Dragon's Claw to protect the gomchen."

Gendun shook his head slowly. "Every morning we have a prayer. A blessing of the wind, to be gentle on the birds. A blessing of our shoes, to keep them from treading on insects."

"What if there were other Tibetans who wanted to protect you, who cared less than you about killing insects?"

The old man looked very sad. "Then the trust imposed on us by the Second would have been broken. We could not accept being protected by a violation of a holy vow."

Shan moved around the room and paused at the row of windows, Gendun joining him a moment later. The small pool was lit by the sun now. Near the water, lying in the sunlight, were four figures on blankets. They were not meditating, but lay as though debilitated, without the strength even to sit.

"You have sickness here?" he asked the monk.

"It is the price we pay. In recent years there have been new diseases which our herbs cannot cure. Sometimes we get pockmarked faces and fevers. We sometimes move to the next life at an early age."

"Smallpox," Shan said in alarm.

"I have heard that name, from the valley," Gendun nodded. "We call it rotting cheek."

He studied the frail forms below him with a sense of helpless horror. What was it Li had said when he mocked Dr. Sung? Sometimes in the mountains they contract diseases that had disappeared in the rest of the world. He had a sudden, waking nightmare, in which all the monks had died of disease, and left the gomchen sealed in his chamber. He blinked away the vision and turned back to the room. Gendun had stepped to the table beside Yeshe. Shan was unattended for the moment. The monks were all with Yeshe now, who was firing a barrage of excited questions at them as he studied another ancient manuscript. Shan quietly moved out of the room.

The hallway was clear. He ran up the first flight of stairs to the landing and stepped into the dimly lit passage. He pulled one of the butter lamps from its niche in the wall and opened the first door.

It was a small room, not much more than a closet. Its shelves were filled with folded tapestries. A huge cedar trunk held nothing but four pairs of worn sandals.

The next room was bigger, but its only contents were clay jars of herbs and boxes of ink brushes.

The third contained huge ceramic jars of barley and, on a central table, a four-foot-long wrought-iron wrench. He stopped in frustration. There should be costumes. He had been certain there would be costumes. Someone had broken the trust and used a costume from Yerpa to kill Jao. He followed the curve of the passage at a jog, passing four more doors until he reached the end, where a large tapestry of the lives of Buddha was hung. He pushed it aside. It concealed a door.

The room was larger than the others, mustier, heavy with the scent of incense. He held up the lamp with a sigh of satisfaction. Gold brocade flickered in the light. The costumes were there, eight in all, laid out on deep shelves along each wall. His hand closed around the gau on his neck and he stepped forward. The skeletal leatherbound arms of the creatures hung out of the sleeves. He stepped to the nearest, raised the lamp to the head and groaned in horror.

He fell to his knees. A dry heave wracked his belly.

"It is a very special place," someone said behind him. It was Tsomo.

Shan slowly looked up, filled with self-revulsion. "I didn't-" he croaked. "I had to know. If there were costumes. For demon dancers."

Tsomo nodded, forgiveness already in his eyes. "It is understandable. But this is a poor hermitage. We do not celebrate many festivals. We have no such costumes."

Shan stood and lifted his eyes. "I was afraid you had Tamdin here. I had to…" He did not finish the sentence.

"Not here. Here-" Tsomo extended his hand reverently toward the silent forms on the shelves. "Here it is just a few old men asleep in their mountain."

Shan backed out, the scene of the mummified hermits of Yerpa forever seared into his brain.

As he closed the door, Tsomo smiled serenely. "Sometimes I visit them, to meditate. I am very peaceful when I am with them."

When they met Yeshe at the door to the mandala room, Gendun handed Yeshe and Shan each one of the small jars from the shelves.

"A hundred years ago there was a very great mandala, done by a monk who was soon to become our gomchen. These are the last of his sands."

Yeshe gasped and pushed the jar back. "I cannot take such a gift."

Gendun smiled. "It is not a gift. It is an empowerment."

Shan saw that Yeshe understood. The gift was their trust. The old monk put his hand on the back of Yeshe's head and uttered a small prayer of farewell.

They spoke no more until they were at the rock maze that led out of Yerpa. Yeshe had already disappeared into the rocks when Tsomo put a hand on Shan's shoulder.

"Why do you do this?" Shan asked. "Why endanger your secrets with me?"

"I would be saddened if you thought them a burden."

"Not a burden. An honor. A responsibility."

"Trinle and Choje, they decided it was no longer honorable not to let you know."

"But will it help me find the murderer?" Shan said in a near whisper, his hand clasped around the jar of sand in his pocket. They had given him empowerment. Could the secrets of Yerpa empower him to save Sungpo?

Tsomo shrugged. "Perhaps it will just make it easier when you do not find him. You must remember what you told me that first day. From Lao Tze. To know that you do not know, that is best." The youth gave a small smile that seemed almost mischievous.

"There is something that puzzles me about you," Shan said. "The gomchen knows nothing about the world outside. But you are the future gomchen. You know about it. Invaders. Murder. Massacre."

Tsomo shook his head. "I do not know those things. I am trained not to look beyond the mountains. I have heard of such possibilities. Like our ninth heard of the Great War and that the Emperor Pu Yi had been dethroned in Beijing. But they are only words. Like hearing of the atmosphere of a distant planet. Like fables. Not one of my realities. I have not encountered them." He studied Shan in silence for a moment. "I have encountered you. You are the most outside I have ever been."

Shan didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "I'm not much to judge the world by."

"There is no need to judge. I only celebrate what the great river of life pushes toward us. One day in his book, our gomchen drew a picture of a Buddha with long flat wings. It is what he saw when an airplane flew over."

Shan looked up at the high, tiny window, barely visible in the afternoon shadows. "I am envious," he said.

"Of the gomchen?"

Shan nodded. "I think it is best," he said heavily, "to know of not knowing."

Chapter Sixteen

Rebecca Fowler was at her desk, her head propped up on one arm, a haggard expression on her face.

"You look like hell," she said, as Shan walked in.

"I have been on the South Claw," Shan replied, trying to fight the exhaustion of his day. "Exploring." Sergeant Feng was sharing cigarettes with workers outside. Yeshe was asleep in the truck. "I need to ask you something."

"Just like that," she said, the bitterness returning. "Something came up while you were strolling over the Dragon Claws." She ran her fingers through her mop of auburn hair and looked up, not waiting for an answer. "I took his hand up there. Your demon's hand. They wanted me to recite mantras with them. Something began howling up on the mountain."

"Something?"

She didn't seem to hear him. "The sun went down," she recounted with a haunted expression. "They lit torches and continued the mantra. The moon came out. The howling began. An animal. Not an animal. I don't know." She put her head in her hands. "I haven't slept much since. It was all so– I don't know. So real." She looked up apologetically. "I'm sorry. I can't describe it."

"There was a man from Shanghai in my hut last year," Shan said quietly. "He scoffed at the monks at first. But later he said sometimes at night when he heard the mantras he held his hand over his mouth for fear his soul would pop out."

The American responded with a small, grateful smile.

"I need to see maps. Satellite maps."

She winced. "When Public Security approved my satellite license they made us agree to a protocol for access. Only eight authorized people. Software generates a log for every printout. The major was quite insistent. So they can be sure we're not looking at something we're not supposed to see." She was growing distant, suddenly wary of Shan. His request seemed to have scared her.

"That's why I came to you."

She sighed but did not reply.

"I'll need the sections that cover the South Claw. More than one date. But including the date of Jao's murder and one month before."

"I was supposed to be at the back ponds an hour ago."

"I need your help."

"The tourists arrive in Lhadrung in three days. My monthly report is already a week overdue. Faxes came from California, demanding to know if I resolved the permit suspension. I have a job to do. My shareholders expect me to do it. The Ministry of Geology expects me to do it. Beijing expects me to do it. The ninety families that depend on this mine for survival expect me to do it." She stood and lifted the hard hat that sat on her desk. "You, Mr. Shan, are the only one who doesn't expect me to do it."

"I thought it was a simple request."

"It's not. I just told you. Somehow I think you never make simple requests."

"I think Jao was taken to the South Claw to be killed because of something seen on one of your maps."

"Seen by Jao?"

"Maybe. Or by the murderer. Or both."

"Ridiculous. We're the only ones who see the maps."

"You said eight people. With eight people secrets can be difficult to keep."

"If you think I'm going to invite half the Bureau to climb all over us for some security violation, you're crazy." She took a step toward the door. "I thought you and I, we were-" She shook her head and sighed. "When we first got the satellite license Kincaid said Colonel Tan might try to trick us into giving up the maps."

"Why would Colonel Tan do that?"

"To catch us in a security violation, then use it against us."

"Do you think I am trying to trick you?"

Fowler sighed. "Not you. But what if you are being used?" She took another step toward the door. "Get someone to put it in writing."

"No."

She looked back over her shoulder.

"Because then you would be caught in a security violation," he observed.

She shook her head slowly and moved toward the door again.

"I knew a priest once. When I lived in Beijing. He used to help me." Shan spoke to her back. "Once I had a similar dilemma. About whether to seek justice or to just do what the bureaucrats wanted. Do you know what he said? He told me that our life is the instrument we use to experiment with the truth."

Fowler stopped and slowly turned again. She looked at him in silence, then tore herself away to pour a cup of tepid tea from a thermos. She sat and studied the cup. "Damn you," she said. "Who the hell are you? Every time things are calming down, you…" She didn't finish the sentence.

"We want the same thing. An answer."

She rose, threw the tea in the sink, and stepped into the computer room. Unlocking a large cabinet with long narrow drawers, she quickly sifted through the top drawer and laid a sheet on the table. "We only print them once a week, sometimes only twice a month. This is two weeks ago. Twenty-mile grid. Best for our purposes. We also have a hundred miles and five miles."

"I need more detail. Perhaps the five-mile grid."

She searched through the drawer and looked up, confused, then opened a second drawer. "It's not there. None of them for the South Claw." She gazed at the empty drawer.

"But you can print more," Shan suggested.

"Kincaid would be furious. Comes out of his budget. He's responsible for the mapping system."

"You said you wanted this thing over."

"At this point I'd be satisfied just to know what over means," Fowler said, then stepped to the console and began typing instructions. Five minutes later the printer came to life.

As she laid the photo on the table she handed Shan a magnifying lens. He followed the slope of the ridge toward the bottom of the map. At its end, where the small valley to the south began, was a V-shaped blackness. "Are they all taken at the same time of day?" he asked. There was an hour written on the margin. 1630 hours. "Can we obtain something from earlier in the day? Noon, perhaps."

She printed one, dated two months earlier, taken at 1130 hours. The shadow at the south end of the ridge was gone. He could see them now, in the remote gorge, a smudge of brilliant color where none had been before. The big horse flags of Yerpa were visible to the satellite.

"That night with Jao," Rebecca Fowler said abruptly. She had been watching him, from across the table. "There was something else. I didn't tell you. It wasn't just because of the wager that we met. We could have done that later. I think he wanted to meet because he had asked some questions. He pressed for answers that night."

"Questions for you?"

"We talked about it. Kincaid and I. We didn't want to obstruct anything. But with all of our production problems we didn't need to become part of some investigation."

"But you changed your mind later."

"When the ponds were being laid out, before I arrived, the mine got its water permits. Rights to take water for the ponds and processing unit as needed. You have to be registered, so irrigation in the valley can be planned. When I got here I saw there was a mistake. The permit covered a stream that doesn't flow here. It's on the other side of the mountain, the far end of the North Claw and beyond, a different watershed. I told Director Hu. He said he would take care of it, that we wouldn't have to pay for the water. We didn't pay. But the permit was never changed."

"What does it mean, having the permit for that watershed?"

"Not much. Just keeps anyone else from using the water, I guess."

"So it was a bureaucratic oversight."

"It's what I assumed. But Jao, as soon as he sat down to dinner, wanted to know about it. He had found out about it somehow, and he was excited. He asked who issued the permit. How much water was available in that area. I couldn't tell him. He asked if I had a copy of the permit somewhere, with an official signature. When I said I did, he was very pleased. It seemed like he wanted to laugh. He said he would call from Beijing with a fax number, so I could send it to him. Then he dropped the subject. Ordered some wine."

Voices rose from outside. Workers were approaching the building. Fowler sprang up to close the red door. She leaned against it, as though bracing for intruders. "I forgot about it. Then Li came into my office. Trolling for information about the permit."

"Trolling?"

"He knew about it. He had questions but didn't seem sure of what he wanted to know. He asked me to explain what Jao had asked for."

"He's the assistant prosecutor," Shan said. "Probably Jao's replacement. There may have been a file he needed to follow up on."

"I don't know," Fowler said. She looked at the floor as she spoke. "What if they had to do with Jao's being killed? The water rights. That's not something a Tibetan would kill for. Why would that monk care?"

"I told you before, Sungpo did not kill him."

She fixed him with a forlorn stare. "Sometimes I wonder. If it got Jao killed, then what about me? That dinner. We talked a long time. Maybe the killer thinks I know what Jao knew. Someone may want to kill me and I don't even know why. Nothing makes sense. If it wasn't this monk Sungpo, then who is trying to frame him? Colonel Tan? Assistant Prosecutor Li? The major? They all seem in such a rush to get him to trial."

"They say they're just eager to get the file closed, because of all the visitors."

"Someone may be lying for personal reasons, not just political ones."

Shan offered a nod of respect. "You've learned fast, Miss Fowler."

"It scares me."

"Then help me."

"How?"

"I need more maps. The skull cave, perhaps."

"We don't have them. We only have maps of our watershed."

"But the computer can give you access."

"We have a contract for this area. Outside that, it's expensive. Fifty dollars an order. U.S. We type in the grid reference. Some computer back home processes the order, verifies our account number, processes it for download, and invoices us."

"A grid reference?"

"There's a catalog with map grids, identified by a code for the grid number."

Shan reached into his pocket and pulled out the numbers transcribed from Jao's secret file. "The catalog," Shan said with new urgency. "Is it here?"

The numbers fit the format perfectly. It took less than five minutes to find the reference. It was for the North Claw and farmland beyond. Jao had seen photos of the area where Fowler had mistakenly received water rights.

"But he didn't get these from us," Fowler protested. "They're unrelated to our operations. We would never order maps outside our operations area."

"Are you sure? Is there a record?"

"The invoices show all the orders. I'm about three months behind in checking the details." They moved into her office. Five minutes later she located the entries. Someone had ordered a three-month sequence of photos of the northern site two weeks before the prosecutor had been killed.

Shan put the invoice in his notebook. "Can you print them out, the same ones Jao saw?"

Fowler nodded weakly.

Shan stood in the doorway to verify that no one was in earshot. "Bring them to me tomorrow at Jade Spring. And I need to take the disks. The ones you took from the cave."

Fowler hesitated. "I need them, too."

"Have you looked at them?"

"Sure. Mostly files in Chinese that Kincaid and I can't read. Some in English, listing contents of the shrine. They sent the altar to a new restaurant in Lhasa. Jansen will want to know."

"Why would they put them in English?"

Fowler cocked her head at Shan. "I hadn't thought about it."

"Because," Shan suggested, "it is a trap."

She sat down heavily at her desk. "For us?"

"For you. For me. For Kincaid. Whoever might take them. I think the major put them there."

"I want to give them to the United Nations office."

"No."

"Why the major?"

Shan dropped into a chair by the wall. "Sort of an insurance policy." He leaned over, placing his head in his hands for a moment. He had an overwhelming temptation to just curl up on the floor and sleep. He looked up. "If you were forced out as manager, who would replace you?"

Fowler grimaced. "You're talking about the permit suspension," she said with a sigh. "There's a procedure in the contract. The company appoints the first manager. After that, the committee would have the choice."

"An American?"

"Not necessarily. Kincaid, maybe. But it could be Hu."

"If you want to keep your job, Miss Fowler, I need those disks."

She considered Shan for a moment, then with a quick, urgent movement pulled some books from a top shelf. Reaching behind the other volumes, she produced a thick envelope and dropped it into his hand.

"I need something else," Shan said apologetically. "I need you to take me to Lhasa."

***

Colonel Tan was waiting in their room at Jade Spring, sitting in the dark, smoking. Feng and Yeshe hesitated as they saw Tan's expression, then moved out to the front step as Shan turned on the light and sat across from him. Five cigarette butts stood end up in a row beside a folder on the table.

Tan's face was drawn and tense. He seemed worn out, as though he'd just returned from extended maneuvers. "You believed them, didn't you?" He spoke to the cigarette. "That I did those things in the Lotus Book."

"I only repeated what I read," Shan said. The air was so brittle it seemed about to shatter. "Is it so important what I believe?"

"Hell no," Tan snapped back.

"Then why should you be so offended by what is in the Lotus Book?"

"Because it is a lie."

"You mean because it is a lie about you."

"Sergeant Feng!" Tan bellowed.

Feng's head appeared at the door.

"Where was I in 1963?"

"We were at Border Security Camp 208. Inner Mongolia. Sir."

Tan pushed the folder toward Shan. "My service record. Everything. Postings. Commendations. Reprimands. Assignment orders. I didn't come to Tibet until 1985. If you want, talk to Madame Ko. I want the lies stopped."

"Do you want Sungpo executed or do you want the lies stopped?"

Tan glared across the table. In the dim light, as he exhaled the smoke through his nostrils, his bony face seemed to hover, disembodied, above the table. "I want the lies stopped," Tan repeated.

"That's not going to help the monk who was executed at the 404th."

"That's the knobs. They didn't consult me."

"Somehow I find it hard to believe, Colonel, that you couldn't stop the knobs if you wanted to."

There was a low, surprised curse by the door, and Shan caught a glimpse of Sergeant Feng as he retreated toward the parade ground. He did not want to be caught in the imminent explosion.

Tan's glare continued, hot and silent.

"I had an offer from Assistant Prosecutor Li. A way to resolve it all," Shan announced.

"An offer?" Tan repeated ominously.

"To tie it all up in a neat package. He said Prosecutor Jao was engaged in a corruption investigation against you. So you had him killed. Said if I testified against you, he could make me a hero."

Tan's eyes narrowed to two dangerous slits. His hand wrapped around the cigarette package on the table and began to slowly squeeze its contents. "And your intentions, Comrade?" Shreds of tobacco fell from the package.