Eliot Pattison - Soul of the Fire

“He could have been taken to Lhasa for triage.”

“Did you bother to check?”

When she did not respond, he paced along the wall, noting the plate of uneaten food beside a tea thermos. Above them hung certificates from universities in Chengdu and Shanghai, and a commendation from the Party for special services to the people of China. For Lam, Zhongje would feel like exile. “Where does a doctor draw the line? I suppose you can lie about a dire long-term prognosis for a patient but not about the broken bone that is causing him agony right now? Do you lie to patients about their death only if they have no hope of survival? Or is it never lie to Chinese, only to Tibetans and foreigners?”

“A severely burned patient was brought to me,” she said with a chill. “It is my job to treat the injured.”

“You know that man’s burns have been healing for days. He was not injured yesterday, and not anywhere near here. Did they send the details of his accident? The government overestimates its ability to control secrets. You’re going to be very embarrassed when the Westerners on the Commission hear the truth about your patient. You will be blamed. It is the only way Sung and Choi can save face. There’s a shortage of doctors in the Gobi desert, along the border with Mongolia. Half your patients will be camels.”

Lam gazed forlornly at him, then extracted a key from a drawer, unlocked a filing cabinet, and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. Her hand shook as she lit one. “What do you want, Commissioner Shan?”

“I want to know where the body is.”

“It was a Public Security ambulance that took it off the slope.”

“Get a copy of the report.”

“Don’t be a fool. I can’t interfere with a felony investigation.”

“I’ve been in the Gobi. Your teeth will wear out prematurely because there’s so much sand in your food. You can tell the ones who have been there for years because of all the steel caps in their mouths.”

Dr. Lam picked up the porcelain yak, seeming to suddenly find it fascinating.

Shan considered her words. “I said nothing about a crime. But you mentioned a felony investigation.”

She kept speaking toward the little yak. “You know. They investigate all the immolations.”

“No. You said ‘felony.’ Meaning they knew for certain a crime had been committed.” He slowly approached her. “Did you go up there? Did you see the wound on the body before it was driven away?”

She did not respond.

“There was a trail of blood leading into the scorched earth,” Shan said. “The man had been stabbed. You would have noticed the wound. Skin doesn’t melt when it burns-it contracts, it shrivels, it curls up around holes in the flesh. The wound would have been obvious. It wasn’t a suicide we watched. It was a murder.” He suddenly realized he had been asking the wrong question. “Who was he?”

“I didn’t see him.”

“You didn’t see the body that didn’t exist.” There was worry in her eyes now. “Sung saw. Sung knew who it was,” Shan ventured, “and he panicked. He overreacted, confiscating cell phones, not letting his own men look up at the slope with binoculars.”

The doctor dropped back into her desk chair as Shan reached into his pocket and dropped the foil-wrapped pin in front of her. “This has the victim’s blood on it. Test it. Type the blood. It won’t match that of your patient.” He saw a flash of defiance in her eyes. “If things go badly, do you want to be just another of Sung’s sheep, or do you want to have some leverage against him? The man who burned was Chinese.”

“Ridiculous. It was a monk. We all saw the robe.”

“A Tibetan monk doesn’t wear a dragon waving a Chinese flag. This man wore expensive shoes, dressed for an office. A robe was wrapped around him just before the burning.”

Lam cast a worried glance at him. “A dragon with a flag,” she repeated in a whisper. Her hand trembled as she opened the foil. When she saw the pin, the color drained from her face.

“Ai yi!” Shan gasped. “You recognize it.”

She seemed not to be breathing. He stepped to the side table and poured two cups of tea from the thermos, then set one teacup in front of the doctor before sitting in the chair across from her like a respectful visitor.

He stared at the little dragon with the flag for a few breaths, then realization struck. “The missing Administrator, Deng. The man Sung replaced.”

“You can probably buy these at souvenir shops all over China.”

“Was it Deng?”

“Administrator Deng wore one of those. He disappeared very abruptly, yesterday morning.”

“Who was closest to him?”

“He had four staff. Except for Miss Lin, Sung reassigned them all yesterday, sent them back east.” Her face was dark with foreboding. “You want me to do an autopsy on a little dragon.”

“I want you to use your talents in pursuit of the truth.”

They stared at each other in silence for several heartbeats, then Shan stepped to the window and gazed out into the night. A vise seemed to be closing around his chest. In the span of a few days, a Commissioner had died and the Commission Administrator had been murdered. The Commission not only studied death, it attracted death. It stank of death. He changed the topic. “There must be dozens of Tibetans who work in the prison, more doing menial jobs here,” he said. “Where do they live?”

Her words came out as a whisper. “Just a maze of run-down buildings past the wind fangs.” Then she looked up at Shan, straightened, and corrected her tone. “It’s an old indigenous community on the far side of the hill. They say it’s haunted by dead monks. Yamdrok, they call it.” She reached for the blood-covered pin and dropped it into a drawer.

“Why wind fangs?”

“After the jagged rocks below the cliff on which the village sits. Where the road curves around the cliff at the edge of the village, a narrow gully empties onto it. A terrible wind blows down the gully from the top of the mountain-a killer wind, people say. Years ago, before Zhongje was here, the government sent in a series of officials to tame the town. The winter can be brutal. Several officials lost their footing on the icy road, and a terrible, sudden gust swept them over the edge onto the rocks below. They say it’s how the mountain gods protect the village.” She seemed grateful to be speaking about something else. “The town plays a useful role in providing laborers for the prison and our compound, a place where former prisoners can be left without disturbing society. There is something of an understanding. We don’t go there, they come here only to work, or for the open market outside the wall.”

“You’ve never been there?”

“Once, with a military escort. We handed out food and medicine on the Chairman’s birthday.”

“When Tibetans get sick, where do they go?”

“There is a people’s clinic there.”

“But this is the most modern medical facility I have seen in Tibet. Surely you provide assistance to them.”

“I have never been asked to do so.”

“And the prison?”

“It has its own infirmary.” She hesitated, nursing her cigarette now. “It would be a severe lapse of security to bring prisoners here. Some of the most important officials in the entire province work in this compound, or come for conferences. They plan things here, for the prison system and the relocation programs. It takes a lot of organizing.”

For a moment, Shan’s mind drifted. Memories from prison of skeletal, starving lamas, of monks dying of typhus and imprisoned farmers left with unset broken bones flooded over him. He struggled to keep his voice steady. “Did you treat Commissioner Xie before he died? Perhaps he had a medical complaint?”