Eliot Pattison - Soul of the Fire

The delegation proceeded up a wide set of stairs and into a richly appointed lobby with faux marble walls. The banners of China and the United Nations flanked double glass doors that led into a much larger conference room bearing the row of miniature flags Shan had seen in the photos. Shan, tightly gripping his folder, entered behind his companions and took the chair indicated by Sung. Miss Lin directed several young women wearing blue uniforms and white gloves to distribute cups of tea. As they worked, Shan considered the angles for the camera in the ventilation duct and with a chill realized he had been placed in the chair where Commissioner Xie had died.

The major leaned over him. “You have nothing to say beyond formal greetings. It was not possible to reschedule the session. You will be properly prepared later.”

“I am confused, Major,” Shan replied in a low voice, speaking English. “Am I supposed to be promoting peace or order?”

The officer’s lips curled in a silent snarl, and for a moment Shan thought Sung might strike him. Then the knob turned to the other Commissioners, all of whom were staring at him, and the fire left his face.

Sung bent close to Shan’s ear. “I told them the old dinosaur was crazy. You can sleep tonight on the soft bed in the guest apartment reserved for you or on a metal slab with a piss bucket beside you. Your choice.” He retreated as the doors opened. The Western contingent had arrived.

A tall, rangy man with wire-rimmed glasses whose shaggy blond hair held hints of grey led the foreigners, followed by a thin woman with long brunette hair, then a plump, squarish man who energetically shook the hands of the other Commissioners with the air of an eager businessman. Shan looked down at the group photo. The six Commissioners who were still alive sat before him. He studied the names inscribed across the bottom. The square-shouldered man was Heinrich Vogel, the German who co-chaired the Commission. The tall man, Benjamin Judson, and the brunette woman, Hannah Oglesby, were both Americans.

Vogel lowered himself into one of the two chairs at the head of the table, smiled at Miss Lin as she set tea in front of him. As Sung lit another cigarette, the American woman shot him a sour expression, then rose to open a window. On her wrist Shan saw a string of dzi beads, a Tibetan talisman against demons.

“We call to order this eighteenth official session of the Peace Commission,” Vogel intoned in English with a flat voice. Miss Zhu, sitting between Choi and Vogel, expertly translated into Chinese.

The German nodded to Shan. “We wish to acknowledge our new member, Mr. Shan Tao Yun of Lhadrung. We welcome you to the historic and hopeful work of the People’s Commission.”

Shan nodded back. “I would be honored to help the people find hope.”

The two Americans grinned. Madam Choi’s eyes went round. Kolsang, the Tibetan, looked up in surprise. Tuan, sitting at the wall, seemed to cringe. Shan had spoken in Tibetan. Major Sung rose and advanced toward Shan as Shan repeated the words in English.

“Excellent! A true believer, then!” Vogel hastily declared.

As the German leafed through his file as if looking for the script Shan spoke from, the major lowered himself into the chair beside Shan. Sung laid a cell phone on the table and pushed it toward Shan. On its screen was a photograph of Lokesh. It had been no more than ninety minutes since Shan last saw his friend, but the knobs had been busy. The old Tibetan sat in a cell of naked stone and wore the uniform of a hard labor prisoner. One eye was swollen shut. A finger was bandaged and splinted.

Shan’s world went dark. Despair welled up again. He had seen Lokesh suffer many times, each incident more wrenching than the last. This time, Shan now knew, Lokesh was suffering because of him. He had been beaten and imprisoned, his finger broken, merely to establish Sung’s hold over Shan.

He gripped his cup of tea in both hands, fighting the impulse to turn and look at the prison on the hill behind them.

“File Fifty-seven. Dorje Chugta,” Vogel read, stumbling over the Tibetan name as Lin distributed a single-page report to each Commissioner. “Age twenty-three. A novice nun at Wokar convent.”

Madam Choi took up the story. “A tragic case. She had confessed to harboring unpatriotic thoughts. A specialist from the Bureau of Religious Affairs was urgently dispatched to intervene. But unfortunately, arrangements could not be made in time. Her psychosis overwhelmed her. Expert forensic investigators also confirmed the presence of hallucinogenic drugs in her blood.”

Shan studied the other Commissioners. All but the Americans were busy writing notes. Judson and Oglesby simply sat with their hands folded in front of them. Did they understand how preposterous it was to suggest that a nun had imbibed hallucinogens?

As if reading Shan’s thoughts, Judson cleared his throat. “Once again, the lab report seems to have been misplaced. Surely we are entitled to see the direct facts, not some summarized conclusions.” As the American spoke, he turned toward Shan. Shan sensed the invitation on his face and edged forward in his chair. Then Sung pushed the phone image closer, and Shan sagged, looking down at the table.

Judson cast a disappointed glance at Shan and turned to Choi. “I am confused once again, Madam Chairman. Was it psychosis or was it drugs?”

Choi forced a patient smile, as if accustomed to inane questions from the American.

Several minutes of discussion followed, in which Zhu and Choi spoke in a familiar code. Zhu reported that the woman had come from a reactionary family with known links to several old gompas, meaning the nun’s family had provided nuns and monks for generations. Choi read a report that the dead nun had been entered into an assimilation program while still a young student, meaning she was given a new Chinese name and sent to a Chinese boarding school. But she had run away, back to her family. Vogel handed the folder to Choi, who held it in midair as if considering what to do with it. Shan now saw that there were two stacks of files in front of her. “A close question. Mental illness, I think,” she declared, and dropped it onto the larger stack.

As she did so, Shan leaned back in his chair with his folder, taking it out of Sung’s view. Under the pretense of examining the case report, he opened the folded sheet with the photographs again. He noticed now there was writing on the paper behind the photos, what appeared to be two separate verses: You won’t see the jewel of my faith, stated the first, Just the gems that are my gleaming bones . The second simply said: It took this long for me to learn how frightened they are of flames.

“File Fifty-eight,” Vogel continued. Shan closed the folder and straightened in his chair. “Kyal Gyari, originally from a herding family. Investigators confirmed that he had no monastic registration and no current residency permit. Shreds of blue and red cloth were found.” He handed the file to Madam Choi, who held it over the smaller stack.

“Nomads are known to move around,” Hannah Oglesby suggested. “They might not understand the need to register a tent.”

“The facts speak for themselves,” Choi intoned in the special sugary voice she seemed to reserve for the Americans. “He gave up his citizenship rights. Therefore, he was an outside agitator working terrorism against the state.”

“Do you have evidence that he left the country?” Judson asked.

“His citizenship lapsed. Therefore, he was an outsider.” Choi dropped the file onto the smaller pile.

The pattern became clear as two more cases were reviewed. One of a schoolteacher who had refused to punish children for speaking Tibetan in her classroom, the other, an old farmer who siphoned fuel from his tractor to cause a disturbance in his town square after his son had been imprisoned. Shan gazed at Choi in confusion as questions leapt to his tongue. Why would the farmer need fuel for a disturbance? Why worry about shreds of cloth? What did the schoolteacher have in common with a psychotic nun? What did these incidents have to do with the acts of self-aggression mentioned in the press release? He opened his mouth to speak when a scream from outside interrupted.