was visited by memories of Gendun in chains, of Bing squeezing him without hands. He kept remembering a note left by an aged lama whom Shan had discovered sitting on a high ledge by a work site the first year of his imprisonment. Shan had gone after the lama after seeing him slip away, hoping to find him before the guards did. He had found the lama-naked, smiling, but dead, having written words with a charred stick on the rock beside him. His death poem read,
When they emerged later onto a high windswept ledge where several poles were anchored by cairns of heavy stones, Yangke pointed out the threads attached to each, still whipping in the wind. Once they had been prayer flags.
“There!” Hostene said, and trotted to the last of the poles, Shan following behind. It bore a new flag, a red bandanna with flowers printed on it. Written over the printed pattern, in black ink, was a prayer to the Compassionate Buddha. He eagerly scanned the mountain above. “She’s still safe!” he called out, and pointed to a small solitary figure on an exposed shelf of rock high above. It could have been anyone but Hostene was convinced it was his niece.
“It doesn’t matter now,” said a downcast voice. Yangke had arrived at their side. The figure in the distance darted from view. Shan gazed at Yangke in confusion. A rumbling in the distance grew in volume. Shan’s heart sank. By the time he gathered his senses and started pulling Hostene toward the shadows a helicopter was already there, screaming past them, hovering as if searching for a landing place, then shooting around the head of the rock.
A full armored squad could fit in the helicopter, and Ren was unlikely to arrive with less. They would have automatic weapons, grenades, sophisticated detection devices, Shan explained. The sound of the machine diminished, then sharply increased, indicating it had deposited its load somewhere nearby and ascended again. At least the knobs would take Hostene and Abigail off the mountain quickly. There would be doctors. Yangke, without papers, should try to hide, retreat, and reach Lokesh and Gendun. Shan might be a sufficient meal to satisfy Ren’s appetite for a day or two. But Drango village was doomed. Shan knew how to resist interrogators, might hold out for maybe a week or even two. But eventually, whether they resorted to drugs, electricity, or just batons, he would be forced to speak. He was the one Ren sought. And if Shan did not fall into his trap, Ren would ferry more loads of soldiers to the mountain.
But when Shan reached the clearing where the helicopter had landed, he found only a solitary figure in black with a pack at his feet. Dr. Gao was inspecting a painting of a protector demon.
“I haven’t sent his body back,” the scientist announced in a flat voice. “It still lies in that morgue in Tashtul. I sat with it before I left. Every day I write a different letter to Thomas’s parents. Every day I rip it up. ‘I regret to inform you that your only son was laid out on a stone and butchered.’ ‘I am saddened to report that our plans to land a family member on the moon have been canceled.’ ‘I am sorry but the outlaws who run the far side of the mountain have taken our young prince.’ ”
“I supposed you would phone them.”
“I can’t. Heinz will do it when he returns. Heinz is good at such things.”
“How did you know to come to the summit?”
“You told me, before. If the American woman was still alive she would keep going up the mountain, you said. This has always been about that American woman, hasn’t it? Abigail. It started with her.” Gao’s voice was that of a rational scientist speaking about a colleague’s expedition.
But it wasn’t about Abigail, not for Gao. It was about Thomas, and the utter failure of a man who, in all his esteemed career, had never known failure.
“I don’t know what you expect, Gao.”
“My expectations,” Gao sighed, “have meant very little lately.” He pointed to the demon, and a chalk drawing of a thunder snake beside it. “Explain this.”
Before Shan could do so, a low, steady voice rose from behind them. Hostene and Yangke had joined them. “The world begins with thunder,” Hostene said. “The early Tibetans said so. The Navajo said so. Abigail came to confirm this with the deity that lives inside the mountain.” Gao cast a worried glance at Shan. Hostene was beginning to sound like a lama.
Gao turned to the Navajo. “The altitude is affecting your brain, Hostene. I brought medicine for that.” Then he faced the painting. “And where exactly does this earth deity live?” He seemed to fear the answer.
“In the paradise at the top of the mountain,” interjected Yangke.
Gao looked up, not toward the summit but to the east, as if wondering if he might summon his helicopter back. Shan set off up the trail.
As they walked, Gao quizzed Shan relentlessly about his experiences on the mountain, making him repeat the puzzles they had encountered before he heard their solutions, then falling silent as Shan told him about Bing’s death.
“Did he know my nephew?”
“He did.”
Gao nodded. “Thomas would not have been drawn into a trap by a total stranger.”
“Your nephew knew more people on the mountain than you might think.”
“I keep reminding myself,” Gao observed in a brittle voice, “that I live a fairy-tale life in a make-believe castle, unconnected to the world.”
“When I said that,” Shan offered, “I did not intend to hurt you.”
“You are an escaped prisoner with a meaningless life,” Gao replied in a hollow tone. “How could you hurt me?”
“I meant-”
Gao interrupted with a raised hand. “No more.”
“No more of that,” Shan agreed. “But now I have a question for you. Did you bring your satellite phone?”
As Hostene and Yangke ate some of the grain bars Gao produced from his pack, Shan and Gao sat on a rock and tried the number for Heinz Kohler. Gao held the earpiece so Shan could hear. An automated reply reported that the receiving phone was switched off.
“Where does Heinz stay when he goes to Lhasa?”
“Always with an old colleague who retired there. They discuss new reports in the scientific journals.”
“Do you have that number?”
“Our satellite phones have always been sufficient.”
“Except today. Call your office in Tashtul,” Shan said. “Your office manager probably has some way to contact him in emergencies.”
Gao frowned, then pressed a number on the phone’s memory and handed it to Shan. The conversation was short. Kohler’s emergency number was that of the most expensive hotel in Lhasa.
“Mr. Kohler has gone to the border on business,” came the soft female voice at the hotel’s reception desk.
“Did he leave a forwarding number?” Shan asked.
“He will be back in a few days,” the woman said. “Is there a message?”
“How often does Heinz go to Lhasa?” Shan asked Gao.
“Once every month in the warm weather. There are always details of shipments to be arranged.”
“That night in Tashtul when you said Heinz knew about Public Security,” Shan asked, “what did you mean?”
Gao stood and fidgeted with the zipper on his jacket. “We always referred to it as his vacation. It was nothing really. A misunderstanding. He was pronounced rehabilitated, the record wiped clean.” Gao began walking up the trail.
Shan followed. “You mean he had been in a Public Security prison.”
“Half the great men in Beijing have had such episodes. A rite of passage.” Gao stopped. “A foreigner like that, trying to succeed in Beijing, surpassing nearly all his colleagues. What do you expect? Jealousy was inevitable.”
“I need to borrow your phone,” Shan declared.
“Impossible. It holds many secret numbers.”
“Just one call, to the colonel who runs Lhadrung County. You can sit beside me. And I need the name of the scientist you said Heinz stays with.”
Gao did not reply, did not even look in Shan’s direction, as he reached into his pocket and handed Shan the
