world. He had covered Thomas’s head with the bag and waited for the unconscious, bleeding youth to suffocate.
Shan’s legs became weak twigs. He lowered himself onto the ground, staring, unfocused, at the boy. Thomas had been so alive, so full of defiance and ambition, much like Shan’s own son. He had been beaten down, had reacted by fleeing, escorting his new American patron to the deadly side of the mountain. Only the day before his uncle had told him he was finished with his childhood.
When Shan finally found the strength to rise, he walked in ever-widening circles around the site of the murder, eventually finding the plastic bag tucked into a crack in a large boulder. Except for a few drops of blood in a line leading up the slope there were no tracks, no evidence of the direction the killer had taken, no sign at all of Abigail Natay. Thomas and Abigail had been doomed the moment they had stepped out of the narrow passage. But how did the killer know they were on their way through the passage? No one should have expected them, they were meant never to return to the western slope again. But the miners had been prowling, filled with blood lust. A miner from Little Moscow could have been there, waiting for Shan and Hostene. Thomas might have been his poor second choice, when his intended targets did not appear. But the hands! Even if a miner seeking revenge had severed the hands, surely he would not have taken them away.
The ledges of rock would have afforded an untraceable route for anyone leaving the scene. The short line of blood, probably drops from the severed hands, led upward toward the miles of rugged, undulating terrain that rose toward the summit.
Gravel rattled behind him. Shan spun about to see Yangke, slowing from a frantic pace, bent over, hands on knees, panting.
“You have to go to the village, to Chodron,” Shan said.
“I’d rather seek a pack of wolves.”
Shan’s reply was to gesture toward the outcropping. “The bridge ladder is gone. Even if it were still there, we couldn’t carry a body across it.”
Yangke’s eyes filled with pain. Shan did not follow him into the circle of boulders but waited, watching the slopes, wondering what reason a man could have for collecting human hands on Sleeping Dragon Mountain. When the Tibetan finally reappeared his face was drained of color. He walked as if the canque were on his neck once more. “It’s him, isn’t it? The Gao boy. This is the end of everything. The army will take over both sides of the mountain now.”
“Go. Tell Chodron who the victim is. Tell him to send four men with a blanket and two poles, for a stretcher. Tell him to reach Professor Gao on his radio, but only Gao, no one from down below. Gao should bring a helicopter to Drango in”-Shan did some quick mental calculations-“six hours’ time. I will go to the cave for Lokesh.”
Yangke glanced forlornly back toward the body. “There’s no point. You should run. Get your friends and flee. I remember hearing about a Chinese prince, centuries ago. He was murdered in a village somewhere. The emperor couldn’t tell who was responsible so he had everyone in the village killed. Whoever murdered Thomas has killed us all.” Yangke looked longingly toward the wild mountains to the south, where a man could lose himself, then back at Shan. He began to trot down the trail toward Drango village.
It was a slow, silent procession. Four men carried Thomas’s body tied to the makeshift stretcher, Shan and Yangke alternately bearing Lokesh on their backs. Even Chodron was pale and subdued when he met them at the top of the fields. He ignored Shan who was walking beside the stretcher. He had arranged a plank table by one of the stone granaries and covered it with a piece of black felt.
The headman did not object when Shan and Lokesh headed toward the stall where Gendun remained under guard. The lama appeared to be reading the unbound sheets of a text propped before him on a milking stool. But he was not reading, only staring at them, unfocused, one hand trembling uncontrollably. He was propped up with rolled blankets, as Hostene had been when Shan first saw him. Shan had never seen Gendun look so frail. After an earlier dose of tamzing torture this sometimes happened. It had taken time for the damage to manifest itself.
Lokesh touched the lama on the knee. Gendun slowly came to his senses, raising his head with what seemed great effort. “Dolma visits me,” he reported, his voice thin but steady. “Yesterday we polished the prayer wheels in the temple.” Shan and Lokesh exchanged an alarmed glance.
Lokesh fell into the quiet rhythm of a mantra to the Compassionate Buddha. Gendun’s lips moved but his eyes were empty. Shan found his own lips mouthing the words as he fought to control the flood of emotion, first anger then deep helplessness. He could do nothing. The more he protested, the worse it would be for Gendun. He heard a dull, staccato rumble overhead. By the time he reached the landing circle the helicopter was on the ground and Gao stood before the makeshift bier. He examined his dead nephew without expression, then somberly studied those who had gathered around the table.
Shan did not move when Gao reached him, did not react when Gao, his face like a gray mask, raised his hand and slapped him. He stood still as a post when the scientist slapped him again harder, a third time still harder. Finally, Gao broke away and disappeared behind the granary. Chodron dispersed the crowd as Shan helped two soldiers wrap Thomas’s body in the black cloth and carry it into the still-whining helicopter. When Shan descended another soldier was there, holding a set of manacles. Shan silently extended his hands and watched without expression as the soldier locked them around his wrists and walked away. The villagers stared at him, stepping fearfully aside when, like a dutiful prisoner, he followed the soldier with the key. No one met his eyes. He had been claimed by the government and, with the final snap of the steel bracelets, had become nobody. He was a number again, nothing more.
The soldier led him to Gao, now seated on the same flat rock Lokesh had been perched on when Shan first arrived in the village. Gao’s face was gaunt, no expression, not even sadness in his eyes.
“When Public Security comes,” Shan said, “they will sweep the slopes and arrest everyone. There will be forced confessions. A heavy price will be exacted.”
“Listen to you.” Though Gao’s face seemed numb, his voice overflowed with bitterness. “Suddenly, the careful politician.”
“Leave the village alone. These people suffer enough.”
“But you told me before, they tortured your lama, they were going to kill Hostene. Why should you care?”
“Even so. .” Shan didn’t finish the sentence. He lowered himself onto the rock beside Gao. It was a quiet season for Public Security, and their Ax to Root campaign still needed to gain momentum. There was not a shadow of doubt that once senior officials outside Chodron’s sphere caught scent of Drango, the village would be obliterated. There would be photographers, perhaps even a film crew, certainly speeches about progress and the twenty-first century. The inhabitants would be herded out, perhaps on two hours’ notice, then a reconstruction brigade would arrive, possibly prisoners who were themselves Tibetan. Shan had seen it before, had been in such a brigade when it was ordered to such duty in the hills above their compound, had watched Lokesh and the other old Tibetan prisoners weep as the prison guards started the process by throwing torches into centuries-old wooden homes.
“Don’t you realize that the man who did this is too clever to be caught by a sweep?” Gao said after a long silence.
“Criminal justice in China is an approximate thing. I didn’t say he would be caught, I said a heavy price would be paid.” Shan gazed out over the distant ranges. “If Thomas is looking down on us,” he ventured at last, “there would be something more important to him than finding his killer.”
“You mean the Navajo woman.”
“She is up on the mountain. I think she is still alive. She crossed paths with the killer before and was spared. But this time I think he took her with him.”
“Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know exactly. He needs her for something.”
“What are you trying to say?” Gao asked after another long silence.
“Hostene and I can find her. When we find her we will know who the killer is.”
