Eliot Pattison - Soul of the Fire

Judson’s eyes narrowed as he read the name. “Kai Cho Fang? There’s no mystery about that poor devil.” He frowned and studied Shan in silence, then sighed and turned his gaze toward the darkness outside. “Dammit. Are we really such fools?”

“The Tibetan with the Chinese name we saw this morning,” Shan explained, “was not the man we saw burning on the hillside. We saw a man whose torso and head were engulfed in flame, whose arms burned as if they had been soaked in gas. That man could not have survived. This Kai was burned in some accident recently. Public Security can change the records here, but if it was a traffic accident or industrial accident there would be other records. They are very arrogant. They would never expect someone to second-guess them, never expect the Commissioners to doubt their word.”

Judson fixed Shan with a noncommittal stare. “Sung ran out of the conference room while that man was still burning,” the American observed. “He appeared down by the gate, shouting commands. One of those constables was looking at the flames with binoculars. Sung seized them and looked himself. For a long time, as if he was not sure what he was seeing. When he finished, another officer put his hand out as if asking for them. Instead Sung slammed them on the pavement and broke them. Then he had his knobs seize the cell phones from all the onlookers.”

Shan slowly nodded. “As I said, the man he saw burning was not Kai. Ask her to check that registration number. Be sure to tell Lin not to speak to anyone about this.”

“Which guarantees she will run to Major Sung.”

Shan nodded again. “His burns were recent-otherwise, they could not have pulled off their charade. Hospital databases for all facilities within two hundred miles report only three Tibetan men with severe burns in the past week. By tomorrow night, one of those accident reports will have been deleted. That will be our man.”

“Major Sung will be unhappy.”

“There’s a favorite slogan about joint ventures between Chinese and foreign partners: ‘Building trust for mutual benefit.’” For the first time, Judson’s grin held warmth. “You can tell Sung it was me who asked and give him one more reason to resent me. Or you can say it was your idea and let him realize you are not to be dismissed as another spineless foreign diplomat.”

Judson raised the paper, suspending it between them for a moment. “I may be spineless, but I’m no diplomat,” he quipped, and stuffed it into one pocket before extracting another paper from a second. “Hannah found this pinned to a bulletin board in the main lobby. We can’t read it, but the original it was copied from had scorch marks.”

Shan’s gut tightened as he saw the words. “‘Soldiers, tanks, bullets, bombs,’” he read. “‘Can never defeat the weapon of my prayer.’”

Judson clenched his jaw and looked into the shadows again. “I’m no virgin in Tibet, Shan. I know about the dissidents. They call themselves purbas, after the ritual daggers. Why are they posting these in a Chinese fortress town?”

“The government means to discourage the purbas by using the Commission. This is the dissidents’ way of responding. The poems complicate everything by showing the people the heroic dimension of the suicides. They’re raising the stakes.”

“This is right in Sung’s face.” The American nodded at the paper. “That’s not so much an epitaph as a rallying cry. Beijing has tanks. The Tibetans have martyrs.”

“The rules are changing, on both sides. People grow reckless. For years, I heard only lamas and old monks talk about the approach of the end of time. Now it is spoken of on the streets of every town.”

“The Tibetans have no chance in a direct confrontation.”

Shan pushed away his dinner. He had no appetite. “History has a way of repeating itself.”

“Fifty years ago,” Judson said in a near whisper, “thousands of monks stood holding their prayer beads and waited for the machine guns to mow them down. What’s the twenty-first century version of that?”

His words hung in the air as they watched the headlights of a truck winding its way up toward Longtou with another load of inmates.

When the American finally spoke, he seemed to have found an answer to his own question. “Nothing’s changed. They just convene international commissions to bless every bullet.”

* * *

Shan touched his Commissioner’s armband as he reached the double doors that led to the infirmary. The uniformed guard glanced uncertainly at it but hesitated only a moment before nodding him through. Inside, the day’s work was winding down. Only two nurses and a janitor were visible in the hallway. They seemed to take no notice as he walked toward the wards.

He slowed as he passed the intensive care room. Kai lay motionless, the only sign of life the subtle movement in the tubes that ran into his body and the blinking lights on his monitors. Feeling eyes on his back, Shan turned to see a Tibetan janitor on one knee by a bucket, watching him. It was, he realized, the same old man with the grizzled jaw and deep eyes who had been watching him on the day he arrived at Zhongje. Shan offered a nod to the Tibetan, who quickly looked away.

The offices at the end of the hallway were vacant. Only the last office, on the corner of the building, had its lights on. The weary doctor who had presented Kai to them was bent over a desk. Dr. Lam started as Shan pushed the door shut behind him.

“You have no clearance to-,” she said as she reached for the phone, then paused when she saw his armband.

“My name is Shan, if you want to report me.”

Lam’s grimace brought out the wrinkles around her eyes. “The replacement Commissioner.”

“I enjoyed your performance today, Dr. Lam. Such sincerity. I must admit I suspected you were in fact a Public Security officer in a doctor’s suit, but then I saw you scold that nurse and use the syringe. You gave me a glimmer of hope. You seemed genuinely interested in your Tibetan patient.”

The doctor eyed the telephone on her desk. Sung could still throw him into one of the dungeonlike cells of Longtou, and he would lose any chance of helping Lokesh. But he glimpsed the nervousness in Lam’s eyes.

“Go ahead. I will wait for the guards. They will send for Sung and Madam Choi, who will explain to the major that they can’t possibly arrange for a second replacement on the Commission in less than a week. They will have to let me attend the official session tomorrow morning. We are still formulating the body of our report. Conspiracy theories are in fashion, suggesting the immolations are all part of a plot by hooligans and traitors. The Westerners aren’t convinced. Things won’t go well if they have reason to believe they were lied to about the latest immolation, the only one they themselves witnessed. You really need to pay attention, Doctor. This isn’t some minor local charade you can just bluster your way through. This is an international charade.”

The doctor’s face tightened. Her gaze drifted toward a little porcelain yak on her desk. “I never supported the idea of bringing the Commission to Zhongje,” she said toward the yak. “But the Deputy Secretary insisted. Pao runs Tibet. No one argues with Emperor Pao.”

“Does Pao run your infirmary?”

Lam winced. “I recall that I prescribed drugs on your arrival, Comrade Shan. Apparently the dosage needs adjusting.”

“I broke the capsules up in my slop pot. You knowingly lied to the Commission. Lied to international diplomats about a patient under your care. Arranged a deception in your own intensive care unit. That immolation took place on the slope, no more than half a mile from here. How many hours afterwards was it before your burn victim arrived? The ambulance must have taken a route through Szechuan.”