warily advancing. He was perhaps two hundred feet away when he recognized it for what it was, and shrank back. Two small shiny solar panels were attached to a metal box with two six-foot poles rising out of it, all camoflauged with gray paint to blend with the rocks. He had stumbled upon a radio relay station for the army base below.
Half an hour later, the bandanna full and tied shut, he found another ledge with an open view to the south and east. He stepped to the edge, resisting the temptation to sit with crossed legs for an hour and let the wind scour him. But he did not dare leave the camp for so long. The army’s secret installation below was in plain sight, no more than two miles away. Above the base was a huge steeply slanting wall of rock, with a strange pattern of pockmarks. He knelt, shielding his eyes, as he studied it. Not pockmarks. Steps had been constructed along ancient goat paths, and the army had used howitzers to destroy them. The devout had not all died at the top. For centuries they had had a way to descend after visiting the mountain god into the lush, fertile valley below, which would have seemed like a paradise to a pilgrim who had navigated the old Bon kora. For a brief moment he was buoyed with the hope that there still might be a safe way down. But no, the army had shown its usual thoroughness. Great slabs had been blown away by artillery shells in a dozen places. Not even a goat could make it down.
“I can see why the gods decided to live here.” The smooth, confident voice came from directly behind Shan.
Shan let the cloth slide through his fingers, catching it by the loose gathered ends. A red flowered bandanna loaded with dung, the perfect weapon for the battle he had been drawn into. He did not face Kohler, but turned sideways, to maximize the force of his swing. “The lost gold, Heinz,” he said in a conversational tone, “it all went down that hole long ago.”
“Lost gold?”
“The gold Bing died trying to find.”
“Bing? Was he one of those miners?”
“We called Lhasa, looking for you.” He raised the bag of dung from his side. “Your old friend moved away over a year ago. That woman in your apartment, the one who has the hotel calls routed to her, does she go to India too?”
“You must be giddy, Shan. I warned you about the altitude.”
Kohler advanced in small steps toward Shan. Behind Shan, inches away, was a five-hundred-foot drop. Shan pulled out the slip of paper with the private number he had obtained through Lhadrung. Kohler, perplexed for the moment, took it.
“Gao knows you lied, though he won’t admit it yet. He knows if he called that number right now she would give him the same message. It’s only a little lie, but with a man like Gao, once doubt begins it can’t be stopped.”
Shan dashed past him. Kohler grinned, opened his hand, and let the wind seize the paper on his open palm. “Gao knows I have business in India. Gao knows I have girlfriends.”
“You dispatch trucks from Tashtul to India. It would take a special driver, and special papers. There would be fees to pay, bribes even. Customs officials are notorious. A lot of trouble for some little trinkets.”
“It’s the new world order. Converting Western appetites into Eastern cash.”
Kohler did not follow when Shan started down the trail. After ten steps Shan looked back. The German was astride one of the high boulders, looking toward the smudge of color on the southern horizon, the distant Himalayas, the white sands of India beyond.
In Shan’s absence Hostene had used the spirit feathers, placing them in a semicircle against the rock to encircle the place where he sat with Abigail. Abigail had begun a transformation back to the woman Shan had first met at Gao’s storehouse, washing away her third eye, removing the jewelry and ceremonial vestment that had covered her denims. Gao was sleeping. Yangke, his blindfold bandage still in place, was working his beads with a low murmur.
Kohler said nothing when he returned. He helped with the camp work, then sat on a rock beside Gao when the older scientist awoke, speaking of the weather, their company business, of arrangements for Thomas’s burial, of suggestions for the boy’s funeral service. He had made a bowl of tea for the older man, offering some of his spare clothes to cushion Gao’s seat on the rocks.
“Heinz, look!” Gao suddenly exclaimed with ridiculous hope in his voice as he pointed upward. “It’s Albert and his father! The young one is flying!”
The announcement seemed to jar Kohler. He paused, then raised a hand, squinting, pointing like an eager boy as the two birds disappeared toward the western slope. “It would take days for us, but they can get home in five minutes,” he said. He exchanged an awkward smile with Gao. But something seemed to have broken inside him.
Their strange, otherworldly day was coming to a close. They were finishing their domestic chores, stacking fuel for the night fire, arranging what blankets they had around Abigail and Yangke, when Shan saw a solitary figure pacing around the fissure. He caught up with Gao, and walked with him silently for several minutes.
“You never did answer my question,” Shan said eventually. “About where Kohler spent his time in rehabilitation.”
Gao paused, bent, and picked up a tiny yellow stone that had fallen at the edge of the fissure. He held it between his fingers, examining it intently for a moment. “It’s just a bunch of molecules that were randomly arranged this way because they happened to be in the right place at the right time in some pool of magma four billion years ago.”
“Maybe that’s what’s at the bottom of the abyss,” Shan observed. “A pool of magma, to give the gold a chance to become something useful, like iron.”
“In Tibet, even molecules can be reincarnated to a higher form,” Gao said with a sad smile, and tossed the little nugget into the hole. They walked along the edge. Stars were coming out.
“It was a misunderstanding,” Gao said suddenly. “Heinz attended a symposium in Japan. His expenses were submitted for reimbursement twice. There was an investigation, which found half a million dollars missing from laboratory funds. There could have been many explanations, we had a large staff. But he was responsible for the ledgers, so he was accountable. The clerk who worked for him was killed in an accident early in the investigation so there was no hard evidence. But someone had to pay. Heinz was sent to a reeducation labor camp.”
A reeducation camp was the softest form of punishment. Which meant that Gao must have interceded.
“His first month there he had a misunderstanding with a Public Security officer, who had to be hospitalized. Before I knew about it they had shipped him away. It took me a month to locate him.”
“A hard-labor prison,” Shan suggested. “A gulag camp.”
“It never should have happened. You know how it goes. A man like Heinz attracted abuse in the gulag.”
“He was sent to western Tibet,” Shan ventured. “To Rutok.”
In the dim light Shan could barely see Gao’s stiff nod. They walked in silence, continuing around the fissure. Two of the cairns they passed had human bones lying before them.
“What did the hermit think he was going to find?” Gao asked eventually. “Where exactly did he think he was going?”
“The bayal? It’s always warm there. He would land on a soft rainbow, surrounded by flowers and birds. Fountains of sweet water. Compassion and wisdom. His uncle went there forty years ago. He has gone to join him.”
“Ah,” Gao said, as if understanding now. Shan realized that Gao too had had a nephew in search of something.
“My father used to write to his grandfather and send him letters in smoke.” It was an ancient Chinese practice, to write letters to the dead, burn them, and let the smoke carry the message to the heavens. “My father died when I was a boy,” Shan said. “But sometimes, in the old tradition, I write to him.”
Gao and Shan watched the moon rise, then began speaking of gold, and India, and of three men who met at a Tibetan prison camp near Rutok, each with his particular skill. Tashi, the artist forger. Bing, with his military training. The third with his command of a small but conveniently placed company. Eventually Shan left, returning with a piece of paper torn from Abigail’s journal, one of her ink pens, and one of the old butter lamps that Shan had lit.
“I don’t know what to say to him,” Gao said in a hoarse whisper.
“When I write my father, sometimes I just speak of my life,” Shan confided. “Sometimes I say I am sorry for
