page torn out of a journal, the same thick unlined paper she’d used for her note at Gao’s house. It was the same handwriting.
He put the paper into his own pocket and walked down the nearest of the little alley ravines to the square. Hostene was pacing around the circle of men still, blowing pollen onto them. No one was ridiculing the Navajo now. These were men who would take a blessing any way they could. Even Bing stood and let Hostene scatter the yellow spores on him, as did a new arrival who stood at the rear, watching with a curious, uneasy expression. Yangke had found them.
Shan retreated to consider Abigail’s note. Bing was keeping her departure a secret even from his patron and partner, Chodron.
A sound came from behind him, a soft, summoning whistle from the shadows. He glanced back to confirm no one in the square had noticed. He did not see the heavy loading boom over his head or the flicker of movement until it was too late. The loop of rope, expertly thrown, cleared his shoulders and was tightened around his waist, pulling him off his feet as it was raised by the overhead pulley, suspending him six feet in the air, his arms pinned to his sides. A man came out of the shadows holding a pole. He wore a hooded black sweatshirt, the hood drawn so low that the man’s face was obscured, even when he began to beat Shan.
By the time Shan tried to call out, he had no breath left with which to speak. His assailant concentrated on his ribs and abdomen, delivering no bone-breaking blows but inflicting maximum pain. The pole, Shan noted, was of juniper. A sacred wood should not be used for such a profane task, he thought.
And then he must have lost consciousness. He was aware only that he was in a storm, with the wind howling, men shouting in fear, deafening thunder and darkness directly overhead. With painful effort he twisted to look upward. If lightning was going to strike him he wanted to see it coming. Despite his pain and the swirling dust, he could see the great black thing. The dragon deity, the thunder maker, the mountain shaker? Then a pebble stung his cheek, awakening him. The dust was scoured away by a downdraft, the shape of the thing outlined by daylight. It was a different breed of demon entirely. It was an army helicopter.
Hands reached up. Knife blades cut the rope that bound him. Orders were shouted, by Bing, by someone in a uniform. Shan was on Hostene’s blanket. Someone was washing his face with a wet cloth, a man with a yellow- streaked face was handing him tea. His shirt was being unbuttoned. Fingers pressed against the pulse in his wrist. He passed out.
Shan lay in a swirling, confused place of memory and fear, in a bed of a remote Public Security ward. The hospital was in the desert, and sand crept into everything, even the cold rice they served him three times a day. He was in a special section reserved for Party luminaries, staffed with special doctors trained in interrogation. They experimented on him, using sodium barbitol, injections of iodine solution, and electric wires and small needles.
“I can’t find a pulse. Just like him, the son of a bitch.”
“Look, he’s vomiting.”
“Excellent. Better than a pulse.”
They tied him naked to a chair and two bald men entered, one with a single long syringe, the other holding a short piece of bamboo.
“No ribs broken,” they confirmed before starting in again.
His handlers were artists. They took pride in never breaking a bone. He could feel the needle that went into his bicep but could not raise his arm to react to it, could only sense the heat oozing up into his shoulder.
All at once he was awake, heart pounding, no longer in his prison of five years earlier but propped against a rock in the central square of Little Moscow. Gao was loading a syringe from a small clear bottle. Over the professor’s shoulder stood a soldier holding a medical kit, nervously eyeing the miners.
“Who was it?” Hostene asked. “Could you see them?”
Shan, unable to speak, shook his head. He leaned and retched, emptying his stomach, then retched again, and again, until nothing came up.
Gao hovered over him with the syringe. Shan held up his hand. “What is it?”
“A painkiller.”
“No,” Shan groaned and, with Hostene’s help, he sat and surveyed the assembly. Bing was calm but the miners looked terrified.
From the lip of the ravine a ladder of small chain links and steel bars hung from the door of the helicopter that had landed. “You’re late,” he said to Gao.
“I’m sorry. The storm delayed me.”
“For the first time in years I was actually happy to see a helicopter.”
Shan pulled Abigail’s note out of his pocket, handed it to Hostene, and fixed Bing with a level stare. “When did she leave?”
Bing’s eyes flashed as he recognized the paper in Hostene’s hand. Before answering he snapped at the gathered miners, ordering them to disperse. Then he said, “I found her wandering, lost, that morning when Thomas was killed. I sent her on her way with a map on a fast mule. She was hysterical. She said she had been knocked unconscious and awakened to find Thomas lying dead beside her.”
“You didn’t try to stop her?”
“Good riddance as far as I could see. I told her how to find the herders’ camps at the base of the first range. They will set her on the right trail to town. She could reach town by this afternoon.”
“And from there?”
“There’s a bus to Lhasa from Tashtul twice a day.”
Shan turned to Gao. “Who else came with you?”
“The pilot, who’s an old friend, and his mechanic, who knows better than to ask questions.”
Shan stood up and took a step, fighting dizziness, then faced Bing again. “I want four gold nuggets. Say half an ounce each.”
“Fuck you.”
“For two men who need to be given a big incentive not to talk.”
Bing eyed Gao, who listened with a curious expression. “It’s a crime to bribe a soldier.”
“Haven’t you heard?” Shan asked. “In the new world order there are no bribes, only business expenses. A reasonable item for your municipal budget. Call it emergency repairs.”
Bing cursed and stepped into the shadows of his shelter. Shan took a step toward the ladder but doubled over in pain. Hostene dropped the gear he was gathering and rushed to Shan’s side. Shan’s raised palm stopped him.
“Go,” Shan said, “climb the ladder. We’ll bring the packs.”
“We?” Gao asked. “You’re in no condition to travel.”
Shan found a familiar face watching uncertainly from the edge of the clearing and gestured toward him. “Yangke will come with us.”
The young Tibetan glanced nervously around the clearing, drawing an unhappy glare from Bing, then gathered up the remainder of the gear and went to the ladder. Shan took three steps before he had to stop, his head swimming.
Bing blocked his way. “No way,” he said.
“There is a way,” Shan said. “Send Hubei with us. You don’t need him to watch the trails once we’ve left.”
Bing stared without expression at his deputy, then slowly nodded. Hubei began retreating into the shadows, then froze as Bing beckoned him. Hubei came forward reluctantly and Bing bent to murmur in his ear, then extracted a folded paper from his pocket and handed it to him. His deputy brightened as he stuffed the pages into his own pocket.
Shan waited for Hubei to climb the ladder, then followed shakily. Gao leaned forward, syringe at the ready. But Shan grabbed the syringe and with an unsteady hand emptied out half its contents before jabbing it into his own arm. Then he headed to the ladder and began climbing.
Once they were on their way Gao asked for the gold nuggets Bing had surrendered to Shan.
