Lightning began to strike an hour later, a single bolt at first, starting at the distant summit, then a dozen more, approaching in rapid succession, shaking the ground, singeing the air, emitting a metallic scent of ozone. A huge dark cloud, nearly black, settled over the mountain, creating an eerie twilight. Now the lighting began in earnest. Most of the bolts were concentrated near the summit but some struck much closer, one less than a hundred yards away. It was as if some angry deity had awakened and begun hammering the mountain.
Shan and Hostene ran for shelter under an overhanging ledge. Hail fell, marble-sized balls that were blown sideways by a sudden gust, slashing at them so hard they had to turn and face the stone, their backs to the onslaught. Then it stopped as abruptly as it had started. Except for the hail it had been a dry storm, the kind that made Tibetans believe in mountain gods.
As the sun emerged, they surveyed the now deceptively tranquil mountainside.
“Why does she lead her killer?” Shan was not even certain he had given tongue to his thought until he saw the old Navajo stare at him in alarm.
“Why do you say such a thing?”
“Each of them has a destination, up the mountain somewhere. They have discovered it is the same one. I think she knows more about how to find it than the killer does. And the killer knows it.”
“You said
“I am sorry, Hostene, but whoever is doing this won’t release her when they reach their goal. And I think she realizes this. Now I understand why she acts as if she has little to lose. If she’s convinced she’s dying,” Shan continued, “if she truly believes she will be gone soon, then completing her work is everything.”
“Her work,” Hostene repeated. “It’s not work anymore. It’s all part of the same thing now. The guilt she feels toward her dead parents. The need to put things in balance. She came to me that night at Gao’s, in tears. She said something that kept me awake for hours. It was wrong that Tashi and Ma had died too, she told me. The more I thought about it, the more it alarmed me. She was saying she was the one who was meant to die.”
In his mind Shan had been revisiting the videos of Abigail he had watched with Hostene, viewing them not as the work of a brilliant professor but of a troubled woman who knew she was dying. “That’s what she’s been doing all along,” he said softly. “Connecting with lost gods.” A minute passed before he spoke again. “The words she wrote you at Gao’s house. ‘In Beauty before me I walk.’ What is their origin?”
“They’re from our Blessing Way. Our chant to open dialogue with our holy ones.” He gazed out over the tortuous terrain ahead of them and nodded. “She’s become more of a Navajo in Tibet than she ever was as a girl in New Mexico. But no one kills for the old gods,” Hostene observed in confusion.
This was a leap Shan was not prepared to make.
They turned onto the track that led to Little Moscow. The trail was blocked with lashed poles, tied together and jammed against rocks to form a gate. The poles bore patterns of colored stripes at the top, in different orders, as if the miners were sending a unified warning to all trespassers. Beyond the poles, on the trail, was the headless carcass of a sheep.
Shan followed Hostene’s worried gaze back toward Drango village, where the smoke still spiraled high. Fire behind, vengeful miners ahead. It was time, as the Tao te Ching said, to block the passages and close the door. He turned back to Hostene. “I think we should pick some flowers,” he announced.
Managing Director Bing was perched on a boulder at the mouth of the ravine watching the column of smoke from Drango when they approached Little Moscow.
“You have the balls of a water buffalo, Shan,” he muttered as they arrived at his side. “Two days ago every miner on this mountain wanted both of you dead.”
“Two days ago Thomas had not been murdered. That changes everything. With Dr. Gao watching, who will dare try to eliminate his investigators?”
“Dr. Gao can’t tell the fox from the hens,” Bing shot back. Then he gestured toward the smoke. “How bad?”
“The village stands. The crop is all but destroyed.”
Bing ran his hand through his thick hair, muttered a low curse.
“Not particularly well planned,” Shan suggested. “How will Chodron keep the village fed without calling on the government for assistance? But why should a village need grants of food supplies when it never did before? That alone will set off an investigation. You and Chodron better forget the gold and start planting peas.”
Bing glared at him. “You can’t think
“As you said,” Shan observed, “Little Moscow exists in a bold new world. Where every man can live up to his full potential.”
There was something different about the miners’ town, Shan thought as he followed Bing into it. The photographs of family were stowed away, the little signs setting forth mileage to hometowns gone. The men had eradicated any evidence of who they were when off the mountain. They were growing suspicious of one another. A rooster stood tied to a pole by one lean-to, as vigilant as a dog. The birdcage he had seen on his former visit was gone, replaced by a plank upon which someone had inscribed an old-style charm against evil ghosts. The few miners who showed themselves glanced warily at Shan and Hostene. Shan walked along the perimeter of the town’s central square, pausing for a moment to study the crumbling fresco, noting the small oval shapes that had outlined some of the sacred objects depicted in the painting, squatting for a moment to examine the section that had fallen out and been placed by the entrance to Bing’s quarters, a fragment showing the head of a fanged creature that appeared half human, half lion.
Bing directed them to the central fire, where he poured tea into metal mugs. “We are honored to entertain the ambassadors from the great court of Gao,” he said mockingly. “But there’s nothing more to find here about the murders.”
“Murders?” Shan asked. “I have recognized my assumptions were faulty. I am now doing research into the creativity of entrepreneurs in the socialist market economy.”
Bing raised his cup in salute, gesturing toward his community of miners who were assembling, forming a circle around them. “Here you see the future of China at its birthing.”
Shan swallowed half the contents of his cup. Hostene began extracting items from his pack.
“The miner who was killed last year,” Shan said abruptly. “What happened to him? Were there witnesses? Why did you conclude that his partner had killed him?”
“You said you weren’t interested in murders anymore.”
“On this particular mountain, corpses are but another resource determined by supply and demand. So much so that when you run out of murders you borrow a body and call it a murder.”
Bing glared in silence at Shan, then glanced sharply at the Navajo. He made a small gesture to Hubei, his wiry, bulldog lieutenant, who fetched one of the shovel handles. “We don’t believe in digging up old ghosts.”
“But that’s my job,” Shan said. “Reviving old ghosts. Making them speak, tapping their wisdom.”
Bing was disturbed. “Talk like that scares people. Every day they’re more superstitious here. Look what they’ve done. Some hang charms outside their quarters. One man bought an old prayer box from a farmer, because he says the only gods here are Tibetan. Another put his rooster outside because his grandmother once told him they frighten off evil spirits.”
Shan nodded at Hostene, who had now arranged certain of the contents of his pack on his brightly colored blanket-his feathered spirit stick, a bag of pollen they had collected from flowers picked on the trail, the leg bone of a yak they had found near the path.
A worried murmur swept through the onlookers. Each miner represented a separate mystery to Shan. The only thing he knew for certain was that they were all superstitious.
“What the hell is he doing?” demanded Bing.
“Hostene is frightened of ghosts too,” Shan declared in a voice loud enough for all to hear. “He is going to perform a ceremony to speak with them, to ask them why they are so upset with Little Moscow, why they think someone is lying to them.”
Bing’s mouth opened in protest. “He’s an American” was all he could manage.
“He’s an American Indian. A shaman among his people. A ghost speaker.”
“Sorcerer!” someone barked.
Shan studied the men. Half a dozen had lowered themselves to the ground, forming a wide circle around Hostene. Others had stepped out of their dug-out homes and anxiously watched from the shadows. The Navajo
