the eyes of each were stone hard. As Shan passed them, the men closed in behind him, following him to the blanket before the central fire.
This village too had its own protocol. The miners formed an outer circle, leaving Shan and the tall man in the vest in the center beside the frightened figure on the blanket.
“Welcome to Little Moscow,” the man in the vest declared. “I regret to announce that applications for residency are no longer being accepted.” A murmur of laughter swept through his audience. “We operate a very exclusive resort.”
Shan made a show of surveying the makeshift structures of the miners’ town. “I was hoping for domed churches and caviar.” Over the man’s shoulder, Shan saw a fresco, one of the most detailed paintings he had yet seen on the mountain, of deities and ritual items painted in an unusual style with unusual patterns.
The tall Chinese said, “Moscow is where the proletariat learned it had nothing to lose but the chains of communism. Moscow has shown the rest of us what the new age means.”
Shan said, “Spoken like a true citizen of the world.”
Some of the miners were well educated, Yangke had told him. Some were even former college students who had decided to get a jump on the market economy. A wide plank hung from a peg that had been pounded into the fresco. It was painted with patterns of colored stripes leading to corresponding names. He realized it was a guide to the ownership of the claims. Beside it, leaning against the wall, were several wooden poles, straight limbs that appeared to have been cut and shaped for use as shovel handles.
“Bing,” the man identified himself, with challenge in his eyes. “Mayor Bing. Managing Director Bing, if you prefer.” There were names in China that immediately dated their holders. Bing, Chinese for soldier, had been popular four decades earlier.
Thomas Gao was the man sprawled on the blanket before the dying fire. He was bruised and bleeding from cuts on his chin and arm but not otherwise injured. He looked up with the expression of a pampered child caught pilfering sweets. Scattered over the blanket were canned goods, a package of batteries, a saltshaker, pencils, two slightly used Chinese paperback novels, four metal cups, several packs of cigarettes, half a dozen old magazines, a stick of deodorant, and a cigar in a plastic wrapper. He had set out his wares but his customers had other business in mind that day.
As Shan bent to help him up, Thomas pulled him closer and whispered in his ear. Shan went cold. Then one of the shovel handles was pressed against his shoulder, levering him backward, away from Thomas.
At the end of the handle was a short, wiry man wearing a green quilted jacket. “Captain Bing says no,” he growled. A scar ran down one side of his face. He had the hardened look of a soldier.
Shan straightened, studying Bing again, considering his indifferent expression and the obsequious way the man with the shovel handle looked at him. “Public Security pensions must be losing their value,” he said.
The tall man laughed. “Public Security officers are turning into babysitters and computer specialists. Who can afford not to accept a position at the forefront of the new economy when it offers itself?”
Shan edged toward the mining claim chart. As he reached it, the scar-faced man grunted a curse and deftly pushed the end of his pole into Shan’s shoulder, spinning him about and shoving him against the fresco. He had seen enough, however. The sticks with the two crimson stripes and one yellow belonged to Bing himself. The blue and red marks had one name beside them. The miner who had claimed Hostene’s campsite, the scene of the murders, was named Hubei.
“Look what you’ve done,” Bing mocked. “You’ve upset the gods.”
Shan saw that a small piece of the fresco had crumbled away where he had brushed against it.
Bing studied Shan coolly, then spoke into the ear of the short man with the pole, who darted away and returned carrying a rough-hewn bench. He placed it by the blanket, then heaved Thomas onto it.
“His people will miss him,” Shan warned.
“He’s going nowhere,” Bing growled. “We’ve no interest in being hacked to death in our sleep.”
“But Thomas is only-,” Shan began.
Bing interrupted by snatching up a black plastic bag lying on top of Thomas’s pack and tossing it at Shan. “He kept a trinket from us today.”
Shan’s throat went dry as his fingers extracted the hard, dark thing. It was a small hand ax, with an old hand-forged head and a short, uneven, homemade handle, smoothed to a sheen from long use. The head and part of the handle were mottled with a brown stain. Shan did not need one of Thomas’s tests to know it was blood.
“Four and a half inches,” Thomas said to Shan in a thin, nervous voice. “I measured the edge. It matches the entry wound on the back of Victim One.”
“Who but the murderer would carry such a thing?” Bing snapped.
“I told you, I am investigating,” Thomas protested, then explained to Shan in a lower voice, “I stopped to get a drink at a spring off the trail this morning. When I returned to my pack this was on top. Someone who knew I was interested left it for me.”
“One lie begets another,” Bing shot back. “Everyone here knows there can be no investigation unless it’s by the government. And the government here is me. Elected by the vote of every citizen. This whelp is no investigator.”
Thomas’s eyes went back and forth, from Bing to Shan. “I am helping Inspector Shan. He is a famous detective from Beijing.”
The declaration was not welcomed by the miners. Two men guffawed, but four slipped away into the shadows. Others stared warily at Shan, tightening their grips around their shovels and picks.
“A disgraced detective!” Thomas quickly added. “A convict.”
“Shan? You’re Shan?” Bing asked skeptically. As he studied his tattered visitor his amusement grew. “Inspector Shan has unique credentials,” Bing said to Thomas. “But you have none. Which means-” A cry of alarm interrupted Bing. Two men appeared from the shadows, dragging Hostene between them. Fearing he would resist, Shan pulled him away from his escorts and led him over to the blanket.
A satisfied smile appeared on Bing’s face. He knocked Hostene’s hat from his head. Murmurs of surprise, then anger, rippled through the crowd.
“We hereby declare you a Hero Worker for exceeding your production quota,” Bing proclaimed to Shan. “You have delivered to us a surplus of murderers. I will send word to Chodron. He wishes some of us to attend the trial, next to you and your pet lama. Nothing validates the social order like taking the life of the disorderly.”
Shan led Hostene to the bench, seating him beside Thomas. The Navajo stared at the gathered men in confusion and despair. Shan stepped in front of the bench, surveying the angry, hungry faces of the miners. Bing’s lieutenant stood by the stack of poles as if ready to distribute them.
Shan went to the center of the circle. “These men are not murderers. They are scholars, each in his own way.”
Bing’s grin showed he was warming to the entertainment. “You are a newcomer to this mountain. You have no notion of what these men have done. This isn’t some prosecution to be dressed up for the propagandists. We are practical men here, we deal with practical facts.” He aimed something in his hand at Hostene’s head. With a momentary stab of fear Shan saw a brilliant spot of red light appear on the Navajo’s forehead. One of the mayor’s tools for keeping social order was a laser pointer. “This one, Inspector, not only was found near the two murdered men, he steals gold from hard-working miners, creeping about in the night like some wild dog. I have sent this information to Chodron. No doubt he would have kept him chained in that stable had he known.”
Hostene flushed and glanced up at Shan.
Bing directed the pointer at Thomas. “And this one treats us like laboratory rats, observing us when he thinks we don’t know, playing the peddler so he can get acquainted with his victims. Sometimes”-Bing strolled along the front of his audience, pausing for effect-“sometimes the young ones like this kill because they have discovered they are incapable of being men. So they express their lust in another way.” He paused again, smiling at Thomas’s expression, raising his brows as he delivered his punch line. “He can’t make his sword work, so he picks up an ax.”
Hostility was growing on several of the faces before Shan. “This man, named Hostene,” he said, indicating the Navajo, “was nearly killed by a blow to his head.” Shan lifted Thomas’s pack, opened the front zipper, and pulled out the photos he had asked the youth to print for him. Thomas’s whispered news had been about the photos and also about the demons on the far side of the mountain. “Here Hostene is some time after the murders. The real killer put him there, then painted signs on the rock with blood.”
