Eliot Pattison - Mandarin Gate

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His hand shook so badly he had trouble inserting the key into the ignition. He sped out of the farm compound, fishtailing in the gravel. As the farm disappeared behind a hill he stopped, clenching the wheel, and a sob escaped his throat. Jigten was right. He did not understand what had been happening in Tibet. The Tibet he knew did not have Chinese gangs living in remote valleys, did not have Chinese intellectuals living in tracts of shabby cottages. Like his Tibetan friends he had lived on the fringes too long, trying to ignore the long convoys of immigrants, the opening of the rail line to Lhasa that was bringing in colonists by the thousands. The Tibet he had come to know was occupied Tibet, with millions of Tibetans controlled by small armed pockets of Chinese, where there had been no doubt that Tibet could step forward with its own culture once those pockets had been removed. But that Tibet was being consumed from the inside out.

He realized that Meng’s car had also stopped, waiting for him. The Tibet he had known also did not have Public Security officers who helped him. He pressed his hands on the wheel, calming himself. “When the world has turned upside down,” Lokesh had once told him, “just turn a somersault and find a new way to stand.” He wiped the blood from his hand and put the truck back into gear.

Meng led him back to town, into the gravel lot beside the police post. “How did you know I was there?” he asked when they climbed out of their vehicles.

“One of the constables said that Genghis was in your truck. He’s the little prick Lung sends to summon people.” She took a step and pointed him toward the teahouse on the corner that served as the town’s sole café.

“I need a map of Tibet and a flashlight,” he said, reaching to open his gau.

She frowned, not hiding her impatience, then stepped back to her car and handed him a map and a light.

Shan quickly located the towns on Jamyang’s list, the paper Lung Tso had meant to torture him for. They were all border towns, on roads that led across the Tibetan border to Nepal, India, and Bhutan. When he looked up, Meng was standing at his shoulder. “I’ve been ordered to arrange for more pressure in the hills,” she declared in a tight voice as she gestured again toward the teahouse.

“Pressure?”

“Reconnaissance in force they call it. Anyone who does not cooperate gets detained. The owner of the teahouse has been held for questioning.”

“Why?”

“Failure to maintain a complete record of those who use the Internet connections at his tables. New patrols are going out. Someone is knocking down the new road signs in Chinese. Yesterday an Armed Police patrol stopped a farmer and when he couldn’t produce his papers they shot the yak he was taking to market.”

“Those four-legged splittists are particularly troublesome.”

Meng frowned again. “The constables were ordered to go out and bring it back, for the kitchen at district headquarters. They reported that they couldn’t find it.”

Shan stepped to the beat-up sedan parked beside Meng’s car, the vehicle used by the constables. He ran the flashlight beam along the body of the car, then plucked a tuft of long black fibers from the seam where the trunk met the body. Meng said nothing as he raised the hairs in the beam of light, then let them drift away in the wind. She had known the constables had found the yak, and probably returned the meat to the farmer. She had known and wanted him to know she knew.

For a few heartbeats they stared at each other, then she nodded toward the rear door of the teahouse. “And I have been ordered to find those who are playing those damned horns in the hills. We have decided they are unpatriotic.”

Shan hesitated as they reached the building. “And ordered to find me?”

Her answer was to open the door.

The little café was dark except for a single table in the center, under a naked lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Major Liang sat in front of a file on the table, staring at the ember of his cigarette. Meng settled into the chair across from the major and looked up at Shan. He should run. He should find Lokesh and hole up in a cave for few months’ meditation. With every instinct screaming against it, Shan sat down.

“I only get assigned to very special projects,” Liang declared, speaking to his cigarette. “Three years ago a monastery went on strike five days before a scheduled visit by some foreign diplomats. The monks thought the visit gave them some leverage over us. They tore up their loyalty oaths, put up a picture of their damned splittist leader. So I was called in. By the end of the first day, the monks were en route to ten different prisons, never to see one another again. By the end of the second, bulldozers had leveled the monastery. By the end of the fourth day, all the rubble was hauled away and I had new highway maps printed showing a blank space where the monastery had been. When we intercepted the dignitaries we apologized and explained there had been a foolish mistake, crossed wires in the planning. We showed them the empty map and took them to a tame monastery where the monks greeted them by singing patriotic songs. After everyone was gone I brought in ten truckloads of salt and covered the old site. Nothing will grow there for decades.” He finally looked up at Shan. “I got a medal and a promotion for that.”

“Surely a man of your talents belongs in Beijing,” Shan observed in a flat voice.

“But I so deeply enjoy what I do. I am a field commander, not a paper pusher. I am due in a week to address some new problems in Rutok,” he declared, referring to the county in far western Tibet whose number of prisons and internment camps rivaled even those of Lhadrung County. “Another damned monk immolated himself. A clear sign of poor discipline on the part of the local authorities,” he added, his eyes lingered on Meng, who would not meet his gaze. “I don’t have a lot of time. Let’s say six days.”

“I asked for help with forensics from Lhasa,” Meng began. “They won’t-”

Liang raised his hand to cut her off. “I am ever aware of your district’s failure to efficiently deal with evidence, Lieutenant. No matter how long we give you, you’ll just complete your analysis and declare there’s not enough to go on.” Liang blew twin jets of smoke from his nostrils. “The murders were committed by a Tibetan lama named Jamyang. A renegade living alone in the mountains, seeking ways to advance the splittist cause.”

Shan could not bring himself to meet Liang’s gaze. He spoke toward the ashtray at Liang’s elbow, filled with crushed butts. “The murders were not a political statement.”

“You’re wasting my time then. Lieutenant Meng said you know about the Tibetans.” The major reached behind his chair into an open briefcase and laid a stone of the table. “Tell me what it is.”

Shan clenched his jaw. He had seen the stone, pressing down on dead hands at the convent. “An old weathered rock.”

Liang repeated his words like a rifle shot. “Tell me what it is.”

“A decorative stone, probably from an old temple or shrine.”

“You truly are worthless, Meng,” Liang spat. “You would have me waste time with this-”

“A carving of a sacred sign,” Shan inserted.

Liang slowly nodded. Shan realized the major had been testing him. Liang lifted the stone, staring intensely at it now as if it were about to reveal all the dark secrets of the valley. “This murderer had a complex mind, Comrade. Starts by laying out the signs of dissent, dead men on a Chinese flag, boots on a Tibetan. The first reaction of anyone would be that it was a dissident. But then he left just enough evidence to identify the woman as a nun. Once that was known it couldn’t be a Tibetan. So we must find a lunatic Chinese killer. Except, Comrade,” Liang said, looking at Shan over the stone now, “except for this stone. He couldn’t resist the temptation, like a private little boast. The police would never see the point. Too subtle. He had to gloat, had to seek out the stone. Did you know there is an old building at the rear whose floor is covered with fragments of carved stone? He went all the way back there just to fetch his stone. Not any stone. Why this stone, Comrade Shan?”