The Skull Mantra (55 page)

Shan did not reply, and watched as she slowly followed Kincaid. Five minutes later Shan found her in the computer room, her head in her hands, staring into a cup of tea. Kincaid was there, playing slow, sad notes on his harmonica, one hand urgently scrolling text on the screen of the satellite console.

“It's over,” Shan said as he sat across from her.

“Damned straight. I'll lose my job. I'll lose my reputation. I'll be lucky if they give me airfare home.” Everything about Rebecca Fowler, her voice, her face, her very being, seemed to have been hollowed out.

“It wasn't your fault. The army will rebuild your dam. The Ministry of Geology will receive an official explanation. This is Party business. They will clean it up quietly.”

“I don't even know what to report home.”

“An accident. An act of nature.”

Fowler looked up. “That poor woman. We knew her. Tyler took her hiking sometimes.”

“I saw her in the photo on the wall.” Shan nodded. “But I believe she knew what Prosecutor Jao knew. If Jao had to die, so did she.”

“Someone said she was on leave.”

“Someone lied.” He remembered how excited Tan had been when he had established contact with Lihua by fax. The faxes had indeed come from Hong Kong. Shan had seen the telephone transmission codes. The source had even been identified as the local Ministry of Justice office. Someone had lied in Hong Kong. Li, who had reported taking her to the airport the night she died, had lied in Lhadrung.

“The satellite photos and the water permits,” Fowler said. “It was somehow about them.”

“I'm afraid so.”

Fowler buried her head in her hands again. “You mean I started it all?”

“No. What you started was the end of it all.”

“The end of Jao. The end of Lihua.” Her voice was desolate.

“No. Jao was already marked for murder. They probably
would have eventually found a way for Miss Lihua to disappear.”

Fowler looked up with a haunted expression.

“There were five murders really, five that we know of. Plus the three innocent men wrongly executed.” Shan poured himself some tea from a thermos on the table before continuing. After seeing the body in the car he felt he might never get the chill out of his gut. “It seemed hopelessly confused. What I didn't understand at first was that there were two cases, not one. The murder of Prosecutor Jao. And Jao's investigation. I couldn't understand the murder without understanding what Jao was tracking. And the motives. Not one, not two, but several, all coming together that night on the Dragon's Claw.”

“Five murders? Jao. Lihua—”

“And the victims of the earlier trials. The former Director of Religious Affairs. The former Director of Mines. The former Manager of the Long Wall collective. Then the monks. I never believed the Lhadrung Five were guilty. But the likely suspects never fit the crime. No pattern. Because it wasn't a single man. It was all of them.”

“All of them? Not all the
purbas”

Shan shook his head and sighed. “The hardest thing was connecting the victims. They were all the leaders of a large government operation so they were symbolic of the injury inflicted on Tibetans. The activists were instant suspects. But no one focused on a more immediate motive. The victims were also officials. And they were all old.”

“Old?”

“They were the senior officials in their offices. Very powerful offices. Among them, they ran most of the county. And below each of them, next in line, was someone much younger, a member of the Bei Da Union.” He stood behind the console. Kincaid was calling up the log of map orders.

Rebecca Fowler's mouth opened but she seemed unable to speak. “You mean the Union was like some sort of club for murderers?” she finally asked.

Shan paced along the long table. “Li was successor to Jao. Wen took over the Religious Affairs Bureau when Lin died. Hu took over at the Ministry of Geology. The head of
the Long Wall collective didn't have to be replaced, because it was dissolved due to its criminal activities. Maybe they didn't even know about it when they started the killing. But when they discovered it generated huge revenues as a drug supplier, how could they resist?” What was it Li had said the first time they had met? Tibet was a land of opportunity. He picked up one of the glossy American catalogs and slid it toward Fowler. “Most of the things in here cost more than they make in a month on their official salaries.”

Kincaid still sat staring at the computer monitor. He had stopped blowing into his harmonica. His knuckles, gripping the edge of the table, were white. “You showed him,” he whispered. “You showed Shan the maps. There were none in the files so you actually transmitted them down for him. You never order maps on your own.”

Fowler turned toward him, not understanding. “I had to, Tyler, it was about Jao's murder. Those water rights we never understood.”

But Kincaid was looking at Shan, who had moved close enough to read the screen. It was not the computer log for Jao's poppy fields Kincaid was studying. It was the log for the maps of the South Claw. The maps that had revealed Yerpa to the American engineer.

“When we studied the photos taken of the skulls in the cave, we found the one that had been moved,” Shan said. “Not destroyed, just reverently moved. I thought it meant a monk had been there. But a monk would have been able to read the Tibetan date with each skull. He would be unlikely to tamper with the order, the sequence of the shrine. Much later I realized someone could have been reverent toward the skull but not able to read Tibetan.” Kincaid seemed not to have heard.

“You mean it was a Chinese,” Fowler said weakly.

Shan lowered himself wearily into a chair across from Fowler and decided to try a different direction. “The
Lotus Book
can be easily misunderstood.”

“The
Lotus Book?
” Fowler asked.

Shan clasped his hands together on the table and stared into them as he spoke. An immense sadness, an almost paralyzing melancholy, had settled over him. “It isn't about
revenge,” he went on. Kincaid was slowly turning to face him. “It isn't about vindication. The
purbas
don't mind committing treason in compiling the records, but they will not kill. The
Book's
just—it's very Tibetan. A way of shaming the world. A way of enshrining the lost ones. But not for killing. That's not the Tibetan way.” Shan looked up. Why, he wondered, did justice always taste so bitter?

“I don't understand anything you're—” Fowler stopped in mid-sentence as she saw that Shan was gazing not at her, but over her shoulder at Kincaid.

“I couldn't understand until I saw Jansen with the
purbas.
Then I knew. He was the missing link. You gave the information to Jansen. Jansen gave it to the
purbas.
The
purbas
put it in the
Lotus Book.
You just passed on what your good friends gave you. Li, and Hu, and Wen, you thought they were trying to create a new, friendlier government, to heal the old wounds by helping the Tibetans. You had no way of knowing the information was lies. You would never have suspected, because it had so much virtue behind it. Everyone was ready to believe that Tan and Jao did those things. You even got your friends to donate military food and clothing as a token of their commitment. A truck of clothes went to the
ragyapa
village, which you knew about and felt sorry for because of Luntok.”

Rebecca Fowler pushed her chair back and stood. “What are you talking about?” she demanded. “A book? The murders had to do with the Tamdin demon, you said. A Tibetan in the demon's costume.”

Shan nodded slowly. “The Bureau of Religious Affairs did audits of the gompas, you know. They found the Tamdin costume a year and a half ago. It had belonged to Sungpo's guru and he had hidden it all these years. But he was going senile, and probably got careless about protecting it. Director Wen hid the audit report describing the discovery and, since so many clerks knew about the audit, a shipment was sent to the museum to cover the tracks. But Director Wen never sent the costume to the museum, because the Bei Da Union had met someone who could use it for them. Someone who would never need an alibi for murder because he would never be suspected. Someone who would revel in the symbolism.
Someone with special powers. Strong. Fearless. Absolute in his convictions about the Tibetan people. About the need to take revenge for the pillage of Tibet.” Or maybe, Shan considered, the need to take revenge on the world at large.

“To kill a man with pebbles, one by one. To sever a man's head with three blows. Not everyone is capable of such things. And to use the costume, it would take someone very special. The Tibetans trained for months, but that was mostly for the ceremony. Someone not interested in the ritual could have mastered the costume much more quickly, especially someone trained as an engineer.”

Kincaid moved to the wall with his photographs of Tibetans and stared at the faces of the children, women, and old men as if they held an answer. “Wrong,” he said in a hollow voice. “You have it so wrong.”

Shan slowly rose. Kincaid began to retreat, as though fearful of attack. But Shan moved to the console. “No, I
had
it very wrong. I couldn't believe that such contempt, and yet such reverence, could exist in the same person.” The computer screen still showed the data on the Yerpa maps. It was extraordinary how well the American had come to understand the Tibetans. In its own way, the killing of Prosecutor Jao had been an act of genius. The American, having discovered Yerpa on the photo maps, had known the 404th would stop work on the road, and no doubt had assumed the major would see that the knobs went through the motions but inflicted no real harm on the 404th. Shan hit the delete button.

There was the sound of more machines outside. Rebecca Fowler moved to the doorway of the room and stared out the window on the far wall. “A flatbed truck,” she said distractedly. “They're taking away Jao's limousine.”

She turned back, her face a mask of confusion. “Tyler, if you know something you should tell Shan. We have the mine to think of. The company.”

“Know something?” Kincaid said with contempt. “Sure, I know something. The Lhadrung Five. They weren't executed. That's how wrong you are. Only ones who died were a bunch of MFCs who should have been executed years ago
for their crimes against Tibet.” He seemed angry. “Except Lihua,” he added hesitantly. “Someone got carried away.”

Fowler's head snapped up. “How could you know—what do you mean?” she asked.

“The club. The Bei Da Union,” Shan said. “Li, Wen, Hu, the major. Mr. Kincaid was an unofficial member.”

“Someone has to act, Rebecca,” Kincaid interjected with an impassioned tone. “You know that, it's why you help with the UN and Jansen. Tibet has so much to teach the world. We have to clear the slate. We've made great progress.”

“Progress?” Fowler asked in a near whisper.

“Someone has to stand up,” Kincaid shot back. “It has to be done. No one stood up to Hitler. No one stood up to Stalin until it was too late. But it's not too late here. This is where we can make a difference. History can be turned around. The Bei Da Union knows that. Criminals have to be turned out of power.”

“Can you recognize a criminal, Mr. Kincaid?” Shan asked. Without waiting for an answer, he turned to Fowler. “Do you have a shipment of samples being prepared for transport next week?”

“Yes,” Fowler said slowly, more perplexed than ever.

“It will need to be stopped. Perhaps you could call.”

“It's already sealed. Pre-clearance for customs.”

“It will need to be stopped,” Shan repeated.

Fowler stepped to the phone and minutes later a truck was brought to the office door. Shan paced about it as Kincaid and Fowler watched in confusion from the doorway.

“The ‘me' generation,” Shan said absently as he studied the shipment crates. “I read it once in an American magazine. They can't wait for anything. They want it all now. With one more murder they would have won. Only the colonel was left. Maybe they were going to take over the mine, too. I think the suspension was partly a response to what Kincaid did with Jao: they wanted to be able to get rid of you if circumstances got out of control. Do you remember what day you received the permit suspension?” he asked Fowler.

“I don't know. Ten days ago. Two weeks.”

“It was the day after we discovered Jao's head,” Shan said, speaking slowly to let his words sink in. “When they discovered their demon was getting out of control. I don't think they had decided yet whether to get rid of you. They just liked to keep options open. Like planting the computer disks and pretending there was an espionage investigation.”

“Tyler,” Fowler gasped. “Talk to him. Tell him you don't know—”

“No one,” Kincaid insisted, “did anything wrong. We're making history. Then I can go home and get the attention we need. I'll bring back even more investment. A hundred million, two hundred million. A billion. You'll see, Rebecca. You'll be my manager. My chief executive. You'll always understand.”

Fowler just stared at him.

Shan began unpacking a box of brine samples, each in its own four-inch-wide metal cylinder. “Something here was made outside. You ordered it from Hong Kong, maybe. The boxes, perhaps.”

“The cylinders,” Fowler said, barely audible. “Made by the Ministry of Geology.”

Shan nodded. “Jao had been trying to find a mobile X-ray machine. He wanted to bring it here, I think, or to the Bei Da Union compound. I believe he expected to find something in the terra cotta statues they were selling or the wooden crates used for shipping. But the Union is smarter than that. I kept wondering, what was the point of advancing your shipping dates?” He unscrewed the lid on one of the metal canisters and dumped its brine on the ground. “It had to be because they wanted to ship as much as possible before the added security precautions for the American tourists took effect.”