Eliot Pattison - Mandarin Gate

Lung Tso was strangely subdued when Shan arrived the next day to ask his favor. His question had come not from resentment but confusion.

“Why in hell would you want one of my men to drive along the valley in your truck?”

“Drive, and stop at places I mark on the map, playing with a shovel in the ditches for a while then driving on.”

“And where will you be?”

“He is going to drop me off at dawn behind the monk’s compound at the end of the valley. With one of your motorbikes. Bring the truck back to the stable in town at the end of the day.”

“You’re going to spy on monks.”

“There’s more than meets the eye at that gompa.” Shan stared at the smuggler with challenge in his eye. Lung still had not explained what business he conducted with the monks.

“We have a rule we try to follow. Only have one enemy at a time. That way you can keep an eye on him, make sure he is not creeping up behind you. But you, Shan, you just piss off everyone. You have no instinct for self-preservation. Who’s following your truck?”

Shan kept staring at him.

“That monk Jamyang. You said he is dead.”

“He died the same day as your brother. He convinced your brother to go the convent. He had me stop on the high ridge above there to confirm that your brother’s truck was there. Then we went to his shrine and he shot himself in the head as he sat an arm’s length from me.”

Lung grimaced. “Monks don’t kill themselves.”

“Monks don’t kill themselves,” Shan repeated. He gazed steadily at Lung as he extracted the folded paper from his pocket. There were two dates that were yet to arrive when Jamyang gave this paper to your brother. One was last week. What happened when you took your truck to the border last week?”

“Not a thing.”

“They have to examine papers, open a few cartons to verify contents.”

“They stamped the papers and waved the shipment through.”

“Because you bribed them.”

Lung said nothing.

“I need to know what you do for the monks, Lung.”

“Same thing we always do.”

Shan leaned closer. “What exactly are they smuggling?”

“Boxes. Not good business to look inside a customer’s goods.”

“What size? What did the monks tell you?”

“The monks come to meetings but they don’t do the talking. It’s those Tibetans from the other side.”

“Purbas?”

Lung shrugged. “I don’t know the Tibetan name for outlaws. They usually go across the high mountain passes but the army has heavy surveillance there now. They wanted a test run on a new route. That’s what happened last week.”

“Test run?”

“A couple big boxes.”

“How long?”

“Big enough for a cabinet. I figure they have altars and such they want to protect from Beijing.”

“The next shipment. Did they say to expect the same kind of shipment?”

“The same, sure.”

Shan slowly nodded. “Like I said. I need a favor.”

The leader of the Jade Crows frowned then disappeared into one of the farm buildings. As Genghis appeared, pushing a motorbike, Lung returned and stood by Shan, silently looking out over the abandoned barley fields, not turning when he spoke again. “If you don’t find the bastard who killed my brother then the Jade Crows will. We’ll go through the damned monastery monk by monk. We won’t be so subtle.”

* * *

Chegar gompa was a small, nervous shadow of its former self. It had been built for at least two hundred monks but as he watched from the rocks above Shan estimated it currently held no more than thirty. Half its buildings lay in ruin, still bearing the powder marks from the artillery shells that had destroyed them decades earlier. The little village at its front gate also bore signs of shelling, its structures showing a patchwork of repairs.

The wall that had once enclosed the compound like a fortress was in rubble on the north and east sides, giving Shan a clear view into the courtyard. A chorten, its white surface weathered to grey, sat at the rear center of the yard, allowing room for assemblies of monks and the ritual galas of festival days. But now that space held a new creation, a raised pedestal nearly as high as the base of the stupa, bearing a tall pole with the flag of the People’s Republic.

The brush behind him rattled and he turned to see an old woman stepping into the little clearing. She held a sack of grain in one hand, a stone pestle in the other. She began to settle by a worn indentation in the rock when she gasped, startled by his presence.

“I am only passing by,” Shan offered.

The woman seemed about to back away, then her gaze fell on the gau that had slipped outside of Shan’s shirt. “A pilgrim?” she suggested.

“Just a pilgrim,” Shan said.

“A pilgrim in the shadows,” the old Tibetan observed.

Shan took the words as an expression of suspicion, but then the woman sighed. “The only way a pilgrim can be safe in these times is to walk in the shadows like the rest of us.”

She settled onto the ledge and emptied the grain sack into the bowl in the rock. As she lifted her pestle she looked up at Shan. “It’s something my grandmother used to do when she was a cook for the gompa. Every village used to have a rock like this. I come up once a month, to keep the rock alive.”

Shan nodded. “My grandmother used to let me work the bellows on her stove when she made dumplings. She would tell me that no one could say they made their own dumplings unless they made the flour themselves.”

An uncertain smile crossed the woman’s countenance and she silently began grinding the barley kernels. Shan watched her with a strange ache in his heart. The sound of the grinding was like that of a stream flowing over pebbles. A wren lit on the ground and the woman extended a kernel on her palm, which the little bird readily accepted.

“Your grandmother fed many more monks than live here today,” he said after turning back toward the compound.

“They have a difficult time. Most of the monks refused to sign those loyalty oaths and the government was going to close it down, finish the demolition they started so many years ago. But Abbot Norbu came. He saved the monks. He saved the gompa.”

Shan looked back at the courtyard. “He saved it by raising a Chinese flag?”

The woman shrugged. “He saved it. He saves it every month,” she added with a nod toward a nondescript building just outside the gate.

Shan saw monks on the bench by the door of the building, then fought a shudder as a monk emerged from the door, followed by a grey-uniformed officer.

“Public Security comes every month?” he asked as the officer gestured the next monk inside.

“Sometimes the knobs. Sometimes Religious Affairs. Sometimes both.”

Gompas were audited. Gompas had periodic fidelity reviews. Gompas were required to certify allegiance and verify registration of all monks, but Shan had never heard of such a small gompa attracting monthly enforcement visits. “Why so often?” he asked. “What is so special about this gompa?”

When the woman looked up there was a perverse grin on her face.

“Perhaps not the gompa,” Shan ventured. “The village. What did the village do?”

“Ten years ago there was a farmer here whose children came home one day with Chinese names pinned to their clothes. When they told him the teachers would no longer allow them to use their birth names, he decided to start his own classes, at night, after the Chinese teachers were gone. By the time the Chinese found out about it he had become famous in the valley. When they came looking for him he retreated into the mountains, and they arrested a few who had helped him. He came down to help those in trouble with the government. He began guiding Tibetans across the border, past the army patrols. Public Security put a bounty on his head after he took his family to India. He is in the exile government today, an important official. Public Security knows he has relatives here.”