The Skull Mantra (9 page)

“I don't understand.”

“They were among us often in the old days.” The lama's eyes stayed on the disc. “When the dark years came they went deep inside the mountains. But people said they would come back one day.”

Choje looked back to Shan. “Tamdin. The medallion is from Tamdin. The Horse-Headed, they call him. One of the spirit protectors.” Choje paused and recited several beads,
then looked up with an expression of wonder. “This man without a head. He was taken by one of our guardian demons.”

As the words left Choje's mouth, Yeshe appeared at the edge of the circle. He studied the monks awkwardly, as though embarrassed or even fearful. He seemed unwilling, or unable, to cross into the circle. “They found something,” he called out, strangely breathless. “The colonel is waiting at the crossroads.”

 

One of the first roads built by the 404th had been the one that ringed the valley, connecting the old trails that dropped out of the mountains between the high ridges. The road the two vehicles now followed up the Dragon Claws had been one of those trails, and was still so rough a path that it became a streambed during the spring thaws. Twenty minutes after leaving the valley, Tan's car led them onto a dirt track that had been recently scoured by a bulldozer. They emerged onto a small, sheltered plateau. Shan studied the high, windblown bowl through the window. At its bottom was a small spring, with a solitary giant cedar. The plateau was closed to the north. It opened to the south, overlooking fifty miles of rugged ranges. To a Tibetan it would have been a place of power, the kind of place a demon might inhabit.

A long shed with an oversized chimney came into view as Feng eased the truck to a stop. It had been built recently, of plywood sheets torn from some other structure. The sections of wood displayed remnants of painted ideograms from their prior incarnation, giving the shed the appearance of a puzzle forced together from mismatched pieces. Several four-wheel drive vehicles were parked behind it. Beside them half a dozen PLA officers snapped to attention as Tan emerged from his car.

The colonel conferred briefly with the officers and gestured for Shan to join him as they walked behind the shed. Yeshe and Feng climbed out and began to follow. An officer looked up in alarm and ordered them back into the truck.

Twenty feet behind the shed was the entrance to a cave, riddled with fresh chisel marks. It had been recently widened.
Several officers filed toward the cave. Tan barked an order and they halted, yielding to two grim-faced soldiers with electric lanterns who stepped forward at Tan's command. The others stood and watched, whispering nervously as Shan followed Tan and the two soldiers into the cave.

The first hundred feet was a cramped, tortuous tunnel, strewn with the litter of mountain predators, which had been kicked to the sides to make way for the barrows whose wheel tracks ran down the center. Then the shaft opened into a much larger chamber. Tan stopped so abruptly Shan nearly collided with him.

Centuries earlier, the walls had been plastered and covered with murals of huge creatures. Something clenched Shan's heart as he stared at the images. It wasn't the sense of violation because Tan and his hounds were there. Shan's entire life had been a series of such violations. It wasn't the fearsome image of the demons which, in the trembling lights held by the soldiers, seemed to dance before their eyes. Such fears were nothing compared to those Shan had been taught at the 404th.

No. It was the way the ancient paintings awed Shan, and shamed him, made him ache to be with Choje. They were so important, and he was so small. They were so beautiful, and he was so ugly. They were so perfectly Tibetan, and he was so perfectly nobody.

They moved closer, until fifty feet of the wall was awash in the soldiers' lights. As the deep, rich colors became apparent, Shan began to recognize the images. In the center, nearly life-size, were four seated Buddhas. There was the yellow-bodied Jewel Born Buddha, his left palm open in the gesture of giving. Then the red-bodied Buddha of Boundless Light, seated on a throne decorated with peacocks of extraordinary detail. Beside them, holding a sword and with his right hand raised, palm outward in the
mudra
of dispelling fear, was the Green Buddha. Finally there was a blue figure, the Unshakeable Buddha Choje called him, sitting on a throne painted with elephants, his right hand pointed down in the earth-touching
mudra.
It was a
mudra
Choje often taught to new prisoners, calling for the earth to witness their faith.

Flanking the Buddhas were figures less familiar to Shan. They had the bodies of warriors, wielded bows and axes and swords, and stood over the bones of humans. To the left, closest to Shan, was a cobalt blue figure with the head of a fierce bull. Around his neck was a garland of snakes. Beside him was a brilliant white warrior with the head of a tiger. Around them were the much smaller figures of an army of skeletons.

Suddenly Shan understood. They were the protectors of the faith. As he moved forward he saw that the feet of the tiger demon were discolored. No, not discolored. Someone had crudely attempted to chisel out a piece of the mural and failed. A small pile of colored plaster lay on the ground below the figure.

His light began to fade. The soldiers were moving down the wall to the far side of the huge chamber. Two more demons came into focus, a green-bodied one with a huge belly and a monkey's head, holding a bow and waving a bone, then finally a red beast with four fangs set in a furious expression and, on an appendage above its golden hair, the small green head of a savage horse. A tiger skin was draped over one shoulder. The beast stood in blazing flames surrounded by bones. Shan's hand clamped around the disc in his pocket, the ornament torn from the murderer. He resisted the temptation to pull the disc from his pocket. He was certain the images of the fanged horse matched.

The lights shifted away from the wall and focused on Colonel Tan's boots, giving him the eerie, larger-than-life appearance of yet another demon. “Things have changed,” he announced suddenly.

Shan studied the grim faces of their escort. His heart lurched again. He knew what men like Tan did in such places. Deep in the mountain nothing would be heard outside. Not a scream. Not a gunshot. Nothing could be heard, and nothing would be found afterward. Jilin was wrong. Not all murders were done for forgiveness.

Tan handed Shan a piece of folded paper. It was his copy of Shan's accident report. “We won't be using this,” he said.

His hand trembling, Shan accepted it.

Tan followed the soldiers toward a side tunnel. Before he
entered it he turned and impatiently gestured for Shan to join them. Shan looked back. There was nowhere to run. Another twenty soldiers waited outside. He looked again at the painted images, empty with despair. Wishing he knew how to pray to demons, he slowly followed.

There was a vague odor in the tunnel. Not incense, but the dust that remains when the scent of incense has long settled. Ten feet into the passage, past a small pair of demon protectors painted on either wall like sentinels, shelves appeared. They had been constructed of stout timber decades, maybe centuries, earlier, over a foot wide, four shelves on each wall connected to vertical risers with pegs. For the first thirty feet along the passage they were empty. After that they were packed full, from floor to ceiling, their glittering contents extending beyond the the reach of the lamps.

A deep chill wracked Shan's gut. “No!” he cried, in pain.

Tan, too, halted suddenly, as though physically struck. “I had read the report of the discovery weeks ago,” he said in a near whisper. “But I never imagined it like this.”

They were skulls. Hundreds of skulls. Skulls as far as Shan could see. Each sat in a tiny altar created by a semicircle of religious ornaments and butter lamps. Each skull was plated with gold.

Tan touched one of the skulls with a tentative fingertip, then lifted it. “A team of geologists found the cave. At first they thought they were sculptures, until they turned one over.” He flipped the skull and rapped the inside surface with a knuckle. “Just bone.”

“Don't you understand what this place is?” Shan asked, aghast.

“Of course. A gold mine.”

“Sacred ground,” Shan protested. He put his hands around the skull in the colonel's hands. “The holiest of artifacts.” Tan relented, and Shan returned the skull to its shelf. “Some monasteries preserved the skulls of their most revered lamas. The living Buddhas. This is their shrine. More than a shrine. It has great power. It must have been used for centuries.”

“An inventory was taken,” Colonel Tan reported. “For the cultural archives.”

Suddenly, with horrible clarity, Shan understood. “The chimney.” The word came out in a dry croak.

“In the fifties,” Tan declared, “an entire steel mill in Tientsin was funded with gold salvaged from Tibetan temples. It was a great service to the people. A plaque was erected thanking the Tibetan minorities.”

“It's a tomb you're—”

“Resources,” Tan interrupted, “are in tight supply. Even the bone fragments have been classified a by-product. A fertilizer plant in Chengdu has agreed to buy them.”

They stood in silence. Shan fought the urge to kneel and recite a prayer.

“We're going to initiate it,” Tan declared. “Officially. The murder investigation.”

Shan suddenly remembered. He looked at the report in his hand, his heart racing. Tan had a real investigator. He wanted to eliminate traces of his false start.

“The investigation will be in my name. You're not just a trusty now,” Tan said slowly, distracted by something ahead. “In fact, no one is to know. You will be my—” he searched for a word “—my case handler. My operative.”

Shan took a step back, confused. Had Tan actually brought him to the cave simply to taunt him? “I can rewrite the report. I spoke to Dr. Sung. But the 404th is the problem. I can be better used there.”

Tan held up his hand preemptively. “I have thought about it. You already have a truck. I can trust my old comrade Sergeant Feng to watch you. You can even keep your tamed Tibetan. An empty barracks at Jade Spring is being readied where you will sleep and work.”

“You are giving me freedom of movement?”

Tan continued to survey the skulls. “You will not flee.” When he turned to Shan there was a cruel flash in his eyes. “Do you know why you will not flee? I have had the benefit of Warden Zhong's advice.” He turned to Shan with a sour, impatient countenance. “There is still snow in the highest passes. Soft snow, melting fast. Threat of avalanche. If you run, or if you fail to produce my report on time, I will assign a squad from the 404th. Your squad. No rotation. On the cliffs above the roads, testing for collapse. The 404th still
has some of the old lamas arrested in ‘60. Some of the originals. I will order Zhong to start with them.”

Shan stared at him in horror. Nothing about Tan made sense except his compulsion for terror. “You misunderstand them,” he said in a near whisper. “My first day at the 404th, a monk was brought in from the stable. For making an illegal rosary. Two ribs cracked. Three fingers had been broken. You could still see the lines in his flesh where the pliers had gripped his knuckles. But he was serene. He never complained. I asked why he felt no rage. Do you know what he said? ‘To be persecuted for traveling the correct path, to be able to prove your faith,' he said, ‘is an event of fulfillment for the true believer.' ”

“It is you who misunderstand,” Tan snapped. “I know these people as well as you. We will never physically force them into submission. Otherwise my prisons would not be so full. No. You will do it, but not because they fear death,” Tan said with bone-chilling assurance. “You will do it because you fear being responsible for their deaths.”

Tan stepped another twenty feet down the tunnel to where the lanterns had stopped. The two guides wore wild, frightened expressions. One of them was shaking. As Shan stepped beside him, Tan grabbed the soldier's lamp and held it up to the third shelf. There, between two of the golden skulls, sat another head, a much more recent arrival. It still held its thick black hair and flesh and lower jaw. Its brown eyes were open. It seemed to be looking at them with a tired sneer.

“Comrade Shan,” announced Tan, “meet Jao Xengding. The Prosecutor of Lhadrung County.”

The high-altitude sunlight exploded against his retinas as Shan left the cave. Stumbling forward, his hand covering his eyes, he heard rather than saw the argument. Someone was shouting at Tan with the unrestrained anger that could issue only from a Westerner. As he moved toward the sound Shan's vision cleared and he froze.

Tan had been ambushed. He had his back to a corner formed by the shed and one of the trucks. Like every other man in the compound, Tan seemed utterly paralyzed by the creature that had attacked him.

It was not just that his assailant was female, or even that she was speaking in English, but that she had porcelain skin, auburn hair, and stood taller than any of the Chinese in front of her. Tan looked up to the sky as though searching for the unlucky whirlwind that must have deposited her.

Shan, still numb from the discovery in the cave, took a step closer. The woman was wearing heavy hiking boots and American blue jeans. A small, expensive Japanese camera hung around her neck.

“I have a right to be furious,” she shouted. “Where's the Religious Bureau? Where's your permit?”

Shan moved around the shed. A white four-wheel-drive truck was parked beside Tan's Red Flag limousine. He moved to the far side of the truck, where he was out of the colonel's sight but where he could still hear the woman plainly. He relished her words. In his Beijing incarnation he had read a Western newspaper once a week to maintain the language skills taught him in secret by his father. But it had been three years since he had heard or read an English word.