The Skull Mantra (21 page)

“Do you know that?”

No, Shan realized wearily, he didn't know that. “But each started with a murder.”

“Strange words, for someone from Beijing. I know your kind. Murder isn't a crime. It's a political phenomenon.”

Shan felt an unfamiliar fire as he stared back at the young monk. “What is it you seek? To warn me? To scare me away from a job I am forced to do?”

“There must be payment in kind. When you take one of ours.”

“Revenge is not the Buddhist way.”

When the monk frowned, the long gouts of scar tissue contorted his face into a gruesome mask. “The story of my country's destruction. Peaceful coexistence. Let virtue prevail over force. It doesn't work when virtue has no voice left.” He grabbed Shan's chin and forced Shan to look as he turned his head slowly, to be certain Shan could see the ruin of his face. “In this country, when you turn the other cheek they just destroy both of them.”

Shan pushed the
purba
's hand away and looked into his smoldering eyes. “Then help me. There is nothing that can stop this, except the truth.”

“We do not care who murdered the prosecutor.”

“The only reason they will release a suspect is because they have a better one.”

The
purba
stared at Shan, still suspicious. “In the hut of Choje Rinpoche, there is a Chinese prisoner who prays with Rinpoche. They call him the Chinese Stone, because he is so hard. He has never broken. He tricked them into releasing an old man.”

“The old man's name was Lokesh,” Shan acknowledged. “He sang the old songs.”

The man nodded slowly. “What are you asking of us?”

“I don't know.” Shan's eyes wandered toward Khorda's hut. “I would like to know who has suddenly been asking for charms for forgiveness from Tamdin. A young girl. And I need to find Balti, Prosecutor Jao's
khampa
driver. No one has seen him or the car since the murder.”

“You think we would collaborate?”

“On the truth, yes.”

The monk did not reply. Sergeant Feng's voice could be heard now, calling for Shan and Yeshe above the bleat of the goats.

“Here—” The
purba
in front spun about and dropped a small goat into Yeshe's arms. His disguise.

Feng was raising the whistle to his lips as Shan and Yeshe stepped out of the doorway.

Shan glanced back. The
purbas
were gone.

Yeshe was silent as they returned to the truck. He sat in the back and stared at a piece of heather, like those worn by the people in the market. “A girl gave it to me,” he said in a desolate tone. “She said to wear it for them. I asked who she meant. She said the souls of the 404th. She said the sorcerer announced they were all going to be martyred.”

The lampposts leading out of town were being painted silver, no doubt for the honored guests soon to arrive from Beijing and America. But a high wind was blowing, so that sand particles adhered to the poles as quickly as the workers applied the paint, making the poles appear even shabbier than before. Shan envied the proletariat its ability to embrace the most important lesson of their society, that the goal of any worker was not to do a good job, but to do a correct job.

The kiosks that housed public phones were being painted, too, although Sergeant Feng could not find a single phone that worked. He followed a wire to a musty tea shop at the edge of town and commandeered a phone.

“No one will stop you,” Colonel Tan replied when Shan told him he needed to inspect the skull cave. “I closed it down the day we found the head. What took you so long? Surely you're not frightened of a few bones.”

As the truck climbed the low gravel foothills that led out of the valley, Yeshe seemed more restless than usual. “You should not have done it,” he burst out at last. “You shouldn't meddle.”

Shan turned in his seat. Yeshe's gaze moved unsteadily across the skyline as they headed toward the huge mass of the Dragon Claws. Giant cumulus clouds, almost blindingly white against the cobalt sky, had snagged on the peaks in the distance.

“Meddle with what?”

“What you did. The skull mantra. You had no right to summon the demon.”

“So you believe that's what I did?”

“No. It's just that these people . . .” Yeshe's voice faded away.

“These people? You mean your people?”

Yeshe frowned. “Summoning is a dangerous thing. To the old Buddhists, words were the most dangerous weapon of all.”

“You believe I summoned a demon?” Shan repeated.

Yeshe cut his eyes at Shan, then looked away. “It's not so simple. People will hear about the words you spoke. Some will say the demon will possess the summoner. Some will say the demon has been invited to act again. Khorda was right. Ruthlessness follows the name of the demon.”

“I thought the demon was already released.”

Yeshe looked with pain into his hands. “Our demons, they have a way of becoming self-fulfilling.”

Shan considered his companion. He had never known anyone who could sound like a monk one moment and a Party functionary the next. “What do you mean?”

“I don't know. Things will happen. It will become an excuse.”

“For what? Telling the truth?”

Yeshe winced and turned back to the window.

Only one thing the sorcerer had said made sense. Follow the path of Tamdin. The Tamdin killer had gone from the 404th, then over the mountains to the skull cave. And Shan had to follow the path, had to return to the horrible, holy place of the dead lamas.

A single army truck with two drowsy guards sat at the turnoff to the skull cave, stationed there while Tan kept the project closed for the investigation. Startled by the sudden appearance of visitors, the soldiers grabbed their rifles, then relaxed as they saw Feng at the wheel.

The air was strangely still as they drove into the little valley. Overhead clouds scudded quickly by, but as they reached the small plateau with the solitary tree, Shan saw that no wind touched its branches. He climbed out of the truck with a strange apprehension. There was also no sound. There was almost no color other than the browns and grays of the rock and shed, except for a new sign in bright red characters,
DANGER
, it said,
ENTRANCE FORBIDDEN BY ORDER OF THE MINISTRY OF GEOLOGY
.

Yeshe exchanged an uneasy glance with him, then followed
Shan toward the cave entrance. Feng hung back as they checked their flashlights, conspicuously examining the tires as though they suddenly required his attention.

The two men walked silently through the entrance tunnel, Yeshe lagging farther behind Shan with each step.

“This is not—” Yeshe began nervously as he joined Shan at the edge of the main chamber. In the dim, shaking light of their handlamps the huge figures on the walls seemed to dance, staring angrily at them.

“Not what?”

“Not a place where—” Yeshe was struggling, but with what Shan was not certain. Had he been asked to stop Shan somehow? Had he perhaps decided to quit his assignment?

The figures of the demons and Buddhas seemed to be speaking to Yeshe. He cocked his head toward them, his face clouding, but it wasn't fear of the images, nor hatred of Shan. It was just pain. “We should not go here,” he said. “It is only for the most holy of people.”

“You're refusing to continue on religious grounds?”

“No,” Yeshe shot back defensively. He fixed his eyes on the floor of the cave, refusing to look at the paintings. “I mean, this is only meaningful for the religious minorities.” He looked up, but refused to look Shan in the eyes. “The Bureau of Religious Affairs has specialists. They would be better qualified to engage in cultural interpretations.”

“Odd. I thought a trained monk would be even better.”

Yeshe turned away.

“I think you're scared,” Shan said to his back, “scared that someone will accuse you of being Tibetan.”

A sound, something like a laugh, came from Yeshe's throat, but there was no laughter in his eyes as he faced Shan again.

“Who are you?” Shan pressed. “The good Chinese who craves losing himself with a billion others just like him? Or the Tibetan who recognizes that lives are at stake here? Not just one, but many. And we are the only ones who have a chance of saving them. Me. And you.”

Yeshe looked back as though with a question and froze. Shan followed his gaze. There were lights at the opposite side of the chamber, and voices raised in excitement.

Instantly they extinguished their own lamps and stepped back into the tunnel. Tan had shut down the cave. No one else was authorized to enter. There had been no other vehicles outside. Whoever the intruders were, they were running a grave risk if captured.

“Purbas,”
Yeshe whispered. “We must leave, quickly.”

“But we just left them back at the market.”

“No. Their ranks are large. They are very dangerous. There is a decree from the capital. It is a citizen's duty to report them.”

“So you want to get away from me to report them?” Shan asked.

“What do you mean?”

“We were with Sergeant Feng since seeing the
purbas
in the market. You said nothing to him.”

“They are outlaws.”

“They are monks. Are you going to report them?” Shan repeated.

“If we get caught working with them it will be conspiracy,” Yeshe said in anguish. “At least five years
lao gai.”

Shan realized the intruders were not in the skull tunnel, but a smaller alcove in the center of the far wall. He pushed Yeshe toward them, moving silently along the perimeter of the huge chamber. Suddenly, when less than thirty feet separated them, a brilliant strobe exploded.

The camera flash was aimed toward the wall paintings beside him, but caught Shan in the face, blinding him. A high-pitched scream split the air, then was abruptly stifled. “Son of a bitch,” someone else groaned in a lower voice.

Shan, shielding his eyes against another flash, switched on his light. Rebecca Fowler, her hand clutching her chest as though she had been kicked, stared at them numbly.

“Jesus, boys,” the man with the camera said. “Thought you were ghosts for sure.” Tyler Kincaid gave a quick, forced laugh and aimed a high-powered beam behind them. “You alone?”

“The army is outside,” Yeshe blurted out, as though in warning.

“Sergeant Feng is outside,” Shan corrected.

“So here we are,” Kincaid said, and took another picture. “Thieves in the night, you might say.”

“Thieves?”

“Just funny—I mean, you sneaking around without lights. Doesn't exactly feel official.”

“And when asked, how should I say this cave relates to your mining project, Miss Fowler?” Shan asked.

Kincaid's comment seemed to have restored her confidence. “I told you. The UN Antiquities Commission. Who's going to ask?” She cocked her head. “And why are you here?”

Shan ignored the question. “And Mr. Kincaid?”

“I asked him to come. For the photos.”

Shan remembered the photographs of Tibetans in the American's office.

“And how much have you seen?”

“This,” Rebecca Fowler gestured around the main chamber with a look of awe. “And we're just getting to the records.”

“Records?”

She escorted him into the alcove, which was partially concealed by a canvas sheet hung over the entrance. Three makeshift tables had been erected on planks over wooden crates. One table held cartons of paper files, another empty beer bottles and ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts. The third, much cleaner, had a cloth thrown over it, with small cartons containing computer disks, a pad to accommodate a portable computer, and an open ledger.

Kincaid kept snapping photos as Shan and Fowler examined the ledger. Beginning a month earlier, it recorded the removal of an altar and reliquaries, offering lamps and a statue of Buddha. Dimensions, weight, and quantity were fastidiously recorded.

“What does it say?” Fowler asked. It was not unusual for foreigners learning Chinese to study only the conversational, not the written language.

Shan hesitated, then quickly summarized the contents.

“How about books?” Tyler Kincaid asked. “The old manuscripts. Jansen says they are usually well preserved, the kind of thing that can easily be saved.”

There was a page recording the removal of two hundred manuscripts. “I don't know,” Shan replied. He knew about recovered manuscripts. Once at the 404th a dump truck had deposited several hundred old religious tracts. Under gunpoint the prisoners had been forced to rip the volumes into small pieces which were boiled in big pots, then mixed with lime and sand to make plaster for the guards' new latrine.

“And on the first page?” Fowler asked.

“First page?”

“Who wrote this? Who is in charge?”

Shan turned to the overleaf. “Ministry of Geology, it says. By order of Director Hu.”

Fowler shoved her hand forward to hold down the overleaf and called for Kincaid to photograph the page. “The bastard,” she muttered. “No wonder Jao wanted to stop him.”

Was it possible, Shan considered, that Fowler was in the cave not about the antiquities but about her mining permit?

Kincaid changed lenses and began photographing the pages, pausing over the detailed entries. “They took an altar, you said. Where's it say that?”

Shan showed him.

Kincaid placed his finger on a column on the right side of the page. “What's this?”

“Weights and dimensions,” Shan explained.

“Three hundred pounds, it says.” The American nodded. “But look, here is something even heavier. Four hundred twenty pounds.”

“The statue.”

“Can't be,” Kincaid argued, following the line of data. “It shows it's only three feet high.”