Eliot Pattison - Mandarin Gate

“I have to.”

“No. I have to.” Meng began tying her hair into a bun at the nape of her neck. “Like you said yesterday, I couldn’t go into that station or down that corridor because I had no way to account for my visit. Now I am on the trail of a suspected criminal, a known thief, who has to be returned to Lhadrung County.” She backed away from Shan and pointed him toward a bench.

Ten minutes later she reappeared in her uniform. She shot him a quick, worried glance as she silently marched past.

* * *

The heavy truck pitched and rolled as it sped along the highway. Meng, driving her car in front, seemed as anxious as Jigten to get out of Chamdo. Shan bent over Dakpo, who was in obvious pain, wiping his brow, tapping the dim battery lantern that was their only light in the hollow they had built into the sacks of rice in the cargo compartment

“He can’t be moved,” the nurse had insisted when Meng and Shan had arrived at the hospital for him. “Cracked ribs,” she warned. “A concussion.”

“We will accommodate him.” Meng had offered.

“Not without a doctor’s order,” the nurse had snapped and retreated to her workstation. She seemed to be surprised when she turned to find Meng hovering over her.

“I am a lieutenant in the Suppression Brigade,” Meng growled, “and I am the most pleasant of all of those in my squad. You don’t want me to call my superior. But if I am not out of here in five minutes with this monk I will have no choice. We will start by demanding all the papers of everyone in this unit.” She pointed to an image on the wall of a blond couple in a sports car, torn from an American magazine. “When was the last time you were examined for loyalty, Comrade?”

The color drained from the nurse’s face and she quickly pulled out a clipboard. “Someone will have to sign,” she said. Meng had scrawled an indecipherable character at the bottom of the proffered page and pointed to a wheelchair.

Dakpo moaned as the truck lurched over a pothole. Shan tried to speak with him but he lapsed into unconsciousness. When his eyes were open they seemed unable to focus.

Two hours later the truck stopped and the rear door opened. They were at a crossroads village, parked behind a decrepit stable. An old Tibetan couple, owners of the rundown roadhouse on the corner, helped ease the monk out onto a stack of straw in the stable. The woman brought a small pot of soup and seeing the fatigue on the faces of Shan and Meng, gestured them toward the roadhouse as she sat and began spoon-feeding Dakpo.

The only other customers wandered out as they glimpsed Meng’s uniform. She unbuttoned her tunic and hung it on the back of the chair. In her pale grey blouse she almost passed for one more weary traveler. They silently ate the soup brought by the old man, then she reached back into a pocket of the tunic and produced two folded sheets of paper. She pushed the first in front of Shan.

It was a copy of a page from an official Public Security file, marked STATE SECRET. He scanned it quickly, his face clouding in confusion. “It’s just a personnel file,” he observed. “For some Tibetan named Pan Xiaofei. Fifty-eight years old. Early assignments with security units. Assigned to special operations, which could mean a hundred different things.”

Meng nodded soberly. “He’s from a village called Chimpuk, only an hour off the highway. A Tibetan with a Chinese name.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You know what the Peace Institute does.”

“It promotes cross-cultural friendship,” Shan said in a tight voice.

“Don’t be such a damned fool! You know what it does!”

Shan stared at her. He tried to convince himself that the knot in his stomach was from hunger. He looked down at the paper. “They produce politically indoctrinated monks,” he said in a hoarse voice.

“And? You damned well know what else they do. They wouldn’t need a platoon of senior Public Security officers just to teach quotes from the Chairman.”

“You tell me, Lieutenant. I want to hear you say it.”

Meng’s eyes flared. “There’s an inner office there, closely guarded. I waited for an hour for the chance to slip in. They keep a special drawer of files in there, a single copy, one card for each agent. A Tibetan name and a Chinese name. That’s how I found this.” She tossed another sheet onto the table. It was a photocopy of a card bearing many lines of numerals and personnel codes, with a record of advancement through bureaucratic grades and Party ranks. In the corner there was a photo with the same Chinese name under it. Pan Xiaofei. Except the photo was of Jamyang.

Shan went very still. His hand trembled as he picked up the first sheet again and read the detailed entries. University in Sichuan, then three special government academies in the east, followed by short duty tours at several monasteries in Tibet, marked as training missions, then finally a year at the Institute. The Institute was the finishing school to which only the elite were admitted. He forced himself to read the rest, then looked away out the window for a long moment.

“Why,” he asked in a shaking voice, “would they send a highly trained undercover officer to become a hermit in Lhadrung?”

“I don’t know. It makes no sense. I don’t think he was sent to Lhadrung. At the bottom there is a note that says Drepung. That’s the big monastery outside Lhasa. Hundreds of monks. The government would have political watchers there. Agents like that, Shan, would be trained in personal defense, in fighting with improvised weapons, or weapons disguised for other purposes. You saw those monks on the street. That fire striker Lung Ma had when he died, it wasn’t the murderer’s. Jamyang had an identical one, issued by the Institute. He showed it to Lung Ma to convince him that he told the truth about his son’s murder, to help explain who the murderer was.”

He pressed his fist tightly against his forehead, as if he could force out the pain that was rising inside.

“Whatever Jamyang may have been is just a distraction, Shan,” Meng said. “We have murders to solve.”

He met her worried, earnest gaze, knowing that she had taken a grave risk by venturing into the inner offices of the Institute.

A movement at the corner of the building caught Shan’s eye. Jigten, who had been napping in the cab of the truck, was walking toward the stable. As he reached the entry he picked up a pitchfork leaning against the wall. Shan gasped and leapt up, running to the stable.

“This will end!” he shouted as he grabbed the pitchfork from the shepherd.

“When there is justice for the boy it will end!” Jigten snapped. The eyes of the wiry dropka held the same wild gleam Shan had seen when he had first cornered him in Baiyun. Shan paused, not sure if he had heard correctly. “The boy?”

“Lung Wi. He was my friend. He died because of this one!”

“Surely you are mistaken, Jigten. Surely you can’t know that.”

“I know! It’s why I made sure Genghis didn’t drive. I heard you say this bastard was in Chamdo.”

Dakpo had pushed himself against the wall, his face twisted in pain and fear. Meng appeared as Shan stepped in front of the monk, facing Jigten.

“You are wrong, Jigten. I didn’t say it was Dakpo. And this is Tibet. Monks don’t kill.”

The shepherd greeted the words with a sneer. “This is Chinese Tibet. Everything is backward,” he said, and gestured to Shan and Meng as if they somehow proved his point.

“Real monks don’t kill,” Shan amended, and pointed Jigten to a milking stool. “Sit down. Tell me about the boy.”

The shepherd muttered a curse, still glaring at Dakpo, but complied. The Jade Crows had laughed when Jigten had first appeared, he explained, asking if he could help with their trucks. But he had persisted, coming back to the garage again and again, cleaning up, washing trucks, letting them treat him like their slave. The son of the gang’s chieftan had taken to lingering in the garage when the others left, and began to take him for rides in the trucks. They had discovered they were only a few years apart in age, discovered a like interest in mahjong and the mechanics of the truck motors. Before long the boy was teaching Jigten how to drive.