The Skull Mantra (22 page)

Shan studied the entry again. The American was right.

Yeshe, over their shoulders, explained. “In these old shrines,” he said in a brittle voice, “the altar statue was often solid gold.”

Kincaid whistled. “My God! It's worth millions.”

“Priceless,” Fowler said, excitement in her eyes. “The right museum—”

“I don't think so,” Shan interrupted.

“No, really. Do you have any idea how rare this statue
would be? A major find. The find of the year.”

“No,” Shan shook his head slowly. He found himself almost angered by the Americans' passion. No, not their passion. Their innocence.

“What do you mean?” Fowler asked.

Shan answered by shining his light around the room. He found what he expected under one of the other tables, a pile of hammers and chisels. “Four hundred pounds of gold would be inconvenient to transport in one large piece.” He picked up one of the chisels and showed the Americans the flecks of brilliant metal embedded in its blade.

Rebecca Fowler grabbed the chisel and stared at it, then threw it against the wall. “Bastards!” she shouted. Angrily she grabbed several of the computer disks and stuffed three of them into her shirt pocket, staring at Shan as she did so, as if daring him to defy her.

Kincaid gazed at the woman with obvious admiration, then began shooting photos again. Yeshe began leafing through the ledger, pausing at a loose sheet near the back. He looked up excitedly and handed the page to Shan. “An audit page,” he whispered, as though to keep the Americans from hearing. “From the Bureau of Religious Affairs.”

“But it's blank.”

“Yes,” Yeshe said. “But look at it. Columns to identify the gompa, date, relics found, distribution of relics. If Religious Affairs does audits, we could find if any gompas had a Tamdin costume.”

“And if so, when it was found, and where it is now.” Shan nodded, with an edge of excitement.

“Exactly.”

Shan folded the sheet and was about to put it in his pocket, then paused and handed it to Yeshe, who stuffed it in his shirt with a look that for the first time might have been satisfaction.

Shan slowly moved out of the alcove, leaving his three companions with the murals as he moved into the tunnel where Colonel Tan had taken him. He paused just before the circle of his light reached the first of the skulls, trying to find words to prepare the others. But no words came, and he forced his feet ahead.

Even the dead were different in Tibet. He had been in mass boneyards back home, after the Cultural Revolution. But there the dead had not felt holy, or wise, or even complete. They had just felt used.

As he moved along the shrine, he found himself gasping. He stopped and surveyed the rows of empty eye sockets. They all seemed to be watching him, the endless lines of skulls like the endless rosary of skulls Khorda had pressed into his hands before making Shan call for Tamdin. With a start, he realized they had been witnesses. Tamdin had been there with Prosecutor Jao's head, and the skulls had seen it all. The skulls knew.

Behind him he sensed a shudder. The others had discovered the tunnel. Fowler groaned. Kincaid cursed loudly. Something like a whimper escaped Yeshe's lips. Shan clenched his jaw and moved on to the shelf where Jao's head had been deposited. He tried to sketch the scene, but stopped. His hand was trembling too much.

“What is it you expect to find?” Yeshe whispered nervously over his shoulder. He stood with his back to Shan, as if expecting to be ambushed at any moment. “This is not a place we should stay in.”

“The murderer came here with Jao's head. I want to find the skull that was moved from here to make room for Jao. Why was this particular shelf disturbed? Was there a reason for this particular skull to be moved? Where was its skull moved to?” Shan felt almost certain he knew the answer to the last question already. It would have been thrown into the shed with the other skulls being processed.

Yeshe seemed not to have heard. “Please,” he pleaded. “We must go.”

As the Americans approached they were speaking of Tibetan history. “Kincaid says this was probably a cave of Guru Rinpoche,” Fowler announced. She too was whispering.

“Guru Rinpoche?” Shan asked.

“The most famous of the ancient hermits,” Yeshe interjected. “He inhabited caves all over Tibet in his lifetime, making each one a place of great power. Most were turned into shrines centuries ago.”

“I had no idea Mr. Kincaid was such a scholar,” Shan observed.

“Jao wanted to stop them,” Fowler announced suddenly, her voice cracking. Shan looked up. A single tear rolled down her cheek.

“What's that?” Yeshe asked in an urgent whisper. “I thought I heard something!”

There was something, Shan sensed. Not a sound. Not a movement. Not a presence. Something unspeakable and immense that seemed to have been triggered by Fowler's sadness. He lowered his pad and stood silently with the others, transfixed by the hollow sockets of the gleaming skulls. They weren't in the heart of the mountain. They were in the heart of the universe, and the numbing silence that welled around them wasn't silence at all, but a soul-wrenching hoarseness like the moment before a scream.

Choje was right, Shan suddenly knew, it was meaningless to ask whether Tamdin was indeed the grotesque monster he had seen painted on the wall. Whoever or whatever the killer had been, the killer had been a demon, not because it had decapitated Prosecutor Jao but because it had brought the ugliness of the act to such a perfect place.

He became aware of something new, a slight rustle of noise that became a chatter. It seemed to be coming from the skulls. Rebecca Fowler, fear now in her eyes, stepped closer to Kincaid. The two stood frozen, listening, then Kincaid abruptly turned and raised his camera toward Yeshe. He fired the strobe like a weapon and the noise stopped. Shan suddenly realized they had been hearing an echoing mantra, started by Yeshe.

The spell was broken.

“You could still help,” Shan suggested as he recovered.

Fowler looked up with a haggard expression. “Anything.”

“We need a record. If Mr. Kincaid could photograph all the shelves.” The skulls knew, Shan told himself again. Maybe he could make them talk.

Kincaid nodded slowly. “I could get all three levels in one frame. Should have just about enough film.”

“I need the inscriptions for each skull included. After I
study the photos maybe we could turn them over to your UN Commission.”

Fowler offered Shan a small, sad nod of gratitude, but lingered when Yeshe went to help Kincaid with the first row of skulls. She and Shan continued cautiously down the tunnel. The shelves ended, replaced by more images of demons painted on the walls.

“Is it true that you're being forced to do this, that you're a prisoner of some kind?” Fowler asked suddenly.

Shan kept walking. “Who told you that?”

“Nobody. Tyler just said that nobody knows who you are. You were some kind of outside official, we thought. But outside officials—I don't know, outside officials get lots of respect.” She winced at her own words.

He was touched by her embarrassment.

“Tyler says it's funny, the way your sergeant watches you. He carries a gun, but he's not a bodyguard. A bodyguard would watch past you, around you. But your sergeant, he just watches you.”

Shan stopped and turned his light toward the American's face. “When I am not investigating murders I build roads,” he confessed. “In what they call a labor brigade.”

Fowler's hand went to her mouth. “My God,” she whispered, biting a knuckle. “In one of those awful prisons?” She looked away, toward the demons. Her eyes were bright and wet when she spoke again. “I don't understand anything. How are you—why would you—” She shook her head. “I'm so sorry. I'm such a fool.”

“A very senior Party member told me once that there're only two types of people in my country,” Shan observed. “Masters and slaves. I don't believe it, and I would be saddened if you did.”

Fowler offered a weak smile. “But how could you be investigating?”

“It was my talent before being elevated to road laborer. I used to be an investigator in Beijing.”

“But you defy Tan, I saw it. If he's your—”

Shan held up a hand, not wanting to hear the next word.
Prisonkeeper,
perhaps? Even
slavemaster?
“Maybe that's why—because he can inflict no further harm.” It was the
kind of half-truth an American would believe.

“Which is why you won't prove that monk is Jao's killer?”

“I can't. He's innocent.”

Fowler stared at him. Maybe, Shan considered, she knew too much about China to accept such a bold statement.

“Then what's going on? You're here like a thief. Li is conducting an investigation, too, but he's not here. What is Tan so worried about?”

So she did understand China more than Shan expected. “I am confused about you, too, Miss Fowler,” he countered. “You are the manager, but you said Mr. Kincaid's father owns the company.”

The American woman gave an amused grunt. “Long story. Short version is that just because Tyler's father runs the company doesn't mean they get along.”

“They are not close? You mean for him Tibet is a punishment?”

“You know what a dropout is? Tyler went to mining school like his family wanted, so he could take over the company someday. But after graduation he announced he wanted none of it. Said the company ruined the environment, said it impoverished local populations. Spent several hundred thousand of his trust funds on a ranch in California, where he lived a few years, then gave it to a wildlife conservation group that was blocking a new mine his father wanted to build. Took a few years for things to cool down to where they would speak to one another, a few more before Tyler agreed to take a job in the company. But his father was still distrustful enough that he wouldn't put him in charge. Still, they're talking now. Tyler is serious about making a new life for himself. He's a damned good engineer. Tyler will be chairman one day, and one of the richest men in America.”

“And you? You're very young for such responsibilities.”

“Young?” Fowler shook her head slowly and sighed. “I haven't felt young for a long time.” She stopped, looking ahead. The tunnel opened into another chamber. “Guess I'm the opposite of Tyler. Never had two cents when I was growing
up. Worked hard, saved, won scholarships. Worked like a dog for ten years to get here.”

“And you chose Tibet?”

She shrugged as she stepped forward. “It's not what I expected.”

The paintings inside the chamber presented a tableau of Tibetan geography, images of mountains and palaces and shrines. On the floor at one end were shards of bone and a dozen skulls arranged in a triangle shape. Fifteen feet away was a row of skulls, surrounded by bootprints and cigarette butts. The soldiers had been bowling.

Fowler picked up a skull and held it reverently in her palms, then began to retrieve the others as though to return them to the shelves. Shan touched her arm. “You can't,” he warned. “They will know you were here.”

She nodded silently and lowered the skull, then turned back down the tunnel wearing a desolate expression. They joined Yeshe and Kincaid, waiting in the main chamber, and the four moved quickly away. No one spoke until they were near the entrance.

“Wait a quarter of an hour,” Shan suggested, “then return the same way you arrived.” He did not ask how they knew a secret route. “I will come for the photos—”

He was interrupted by a gasp from Fowler. A figure had appeared in the entranceway, lit by the brilliant sunlight as though with a spotlight.

“It's him!” Fowler cried in a hoarse whisper, and she and Kincaid faded into the shadows. But Shan needed no explanation. The man in the entrance could only be Director Hu of the Ministry of Geology.

 

Shan stepped out into the light.

“Comrade Inspector!” the short, stocky man called out. “What a pleasure! I had hoped to find you still here.” On his wide face his tiny black eyes looked like beetles.

“We have not been introduced,” Shan observed slowly, surveying the compound as he spoke.

“No. But here I am, coming all this way to help you. And here you are, working so hard to help me.” He ceremoniously handed Shan his card. It was made of vinyl. Director
of Mines, Lhadrung County, it read. Hu Yaohong. Hu Who Wants to be Red.

A red truck was parked beside their own. Suddenly Shan remembered: The same truck had been parked at the worksite the day they had discovered Jao's body. He studied it more closely. It was a British Land Rover, the most expensive vehicle he had ever seen in Lhadrung.

“You came to help?” Shan asked.

“That, and for a security check.”

There was a man talking to Feng. With a twitch of his gut Shan realized Hu wasn't referring to security at the entrance. The second visitor was Lieutenant Chang, from the 404th. Chang looked at him with an indolent eye, the gaze of a shopkeeper confirming his inventory.

As Director Hu took a step toward the cave, Shan moved in front of him. “I do have some questions for you.”

“In my mine, I can show you—”

“No,” Shan pressed. Had Hu seen the Americans? He half expected Kincaid to step out for a photograph. “Please. I'd rather not.” He put his hand on his stomach and tried to look nauseated. “It's very unsettling for me.”

“You're scared?” The Director of Mines looked amused. He wore a large gold ring. For a geologist he seemed extremely well dressed. “We could sit in the car perhaps? It's British, you know.”

“I have to return to town. Colonel Tan.”

“Excellent! I'll drive you. I must explain my evidence.” Hu called out and Chang threw him the keys, then nodded as Hu instructed him to follow with Feng and Yeshe.