Eliot Pattison - Mandarin Gate

“What state secrets could you steal in Baiyun?” he pressed.

“On my computer I was looking into the management systems for the dropka relocation camps. They need more medicine than they’re getting at Clear Water.”

Shan gazed at her with new interest. “Show me,” he said, indicating Meng’s computer.

“No!” Meng gasped. “You can’t…” Her protest died away. Sansan fingers were already flying over the keyboard.

Minutes later Sansan was scrolling through pages of data showing the camps throughout Tibet, with lists of inhabitants and management plans for moving the dropka into factory jobs. She stopped at the entries for Clear Water Camp.

“What if some official wants to send orders? Like to the manager of Clear Water Camp?”

“It would require special security codes.”

Shan frowned in disappointment.

“Which will take a few more minutes,” Sansan added with a new glint in her eyes.

Shan watched in confused awe as the woman sped through screens of numbers and symbols. At last she looked up expectantly. “What do you want to say to him?”

Shan looked up and saw the warning in Meng’s eyes. He held her gaze as he spoke to Sansan. “What I want to say is that the granddaughter of the headman Rapeche is to be immediately recalled from her factory in Guangdong.”

Meng muttered a curse but did not move.

When Sansan had finished he turned to Meng. “Dakpo told me the monastery has a computer,” he said, query in his eyes.

“I wouldn’t know,” the lieutenant said, then paused. “Yes. Actually they do. In the administrative office. The Bureau of Religious Affairs requires it now, so that decrees and orders can be efficiently transmitted.”

Shan nodded. “Every police laptop computer I’ve ever seen looks the same. Do you have others here?” he asked Meng.

“A couple were sent for the constables. They never use them. The drives are empty.”

Shan filled his cup and paced around the room, pausing to study the outer office and the cell beyond the desk. “I’ve changed my mind. We will invite Liang here. But first get one of those other computers. Put it under the pallet in the cell. Sansan will need it tomorrow.”

* * *

Shan felt closer to Jamyang than ever as he drove up the rugged track toward the lama’s hut. Lung’s men had finished repairing his truck as Shan and the leader of the Jade Crows had spoken of his plans. Shan had left Lung with a packet of incense sticks and made him promise that he would stay with the American girl all the way to Nepal. Lung had been quiet when Shan had stated he probably would be leaving the valley. “Wait here,” the gang leader had said, then disappeared into his house. When he returned he handed Shan a small clay deity figure. “That first day,” he said. “I smashed that one of yours. I shouldn’t have.…” He shrugged, not finishing the sentence, and shook Shan’s hand.

Shan took care of his main task at the shrine first, finding the decorated pistol and Yuan’s spirit tablets, then stowing them in his truck before returning to the shrine. The offering objects were still on the lama’s makeshift altar, along with sprigs of heather and hearth-baked effigy figures left by Tibetans who lived in the hills. Shan lit some incense, then picked up a little bronze figure and began cleaning it. He had finished nearly half the altar objects when he heard footsteps behind him.

Meng was at the cairn by the edge of the shrine, holding a weathered mani stone. “I found this by the side of the highway,” she said in a self-conscious tone. “All by itself. It was going to be broken under some truck. I picked it up and put it in my car. It seemed like it needed to be somewhere else.” She looked inquiringly at Shan as she set it on top of the cairn. “Will this do?”

He nodded slowly.

She moved hesitantly toward him, as if uncertain of his reaction. She had replaced her uniform top with a bright red blouse and one of the rough felt vests sold by Tibetans in the market.

“You look like a Tibetan farmer going out for her herd.”

“Is that good?” She seemed to be struggling to put a smile on her face.

“It’s fine, Meng. More than fine.”

She reached his side and gestured to the other offerings. “Show me what to do.”

Shan handed her one of the rags he was using.

They worked in silence. Meng had the air of a novice nun as she handled the little deities. Shan explained the deities carved in the rock, showing her the little skulls underneath depicting the frailty of human existence.

When they finished, they walked on the slope above and spoke of little things, of stories from their youth and the larks that flitted about them. “I’ve heard it’s a magic mountain,” Meng said, pointing to snow-capped Yangon as it came into view.

“They say,” Shan added, “that at least the people who dwell in its shadow find magic sometimes.”

She looked at him, searching his eyes, as if longing to say something, then she turned away. They were not to speak of things below, they each seemed to have decided, not to talk of the treachery and death, not to speak of the disaster that Shan was about to bring on himself the next day. From Meng’s car they brought a blanket and a sack of cold dumplings she had brought from town, then laid under the summer stars. They listened to the cries of nighthawks and watched a meteor streaking toward the massive mountain.

He stirred her at dawn. “I have to go,” he said as he picked grass from her hair. “I have to ready things.”

For a moment she lay without moving, her eyes wide and unknowing. Then she shut them and sighed and when she opened they were heavy with the world.

They folded the blanket in silence and descended the slope. His truck had come into sight when they encountered a small cairn with a tangled strand of prayer flags wrapped around its base. They straightened the rope and anchored it anew at the top. Meng began straightening and wiping the tattered, dirty flags. “I hear there are words to say, to put power in the flags,” she said.

He taught her the mantra. “I must go make arrangements,” he said.

She held his arm a moment. “We can’t just let the murderer leave, Shan, can’t let him go unpunished.”

Shan saw the torment in her eyes. “He will be punished, Meng. He will be punished by the truth. He will be pushed out of the valley and marked by all monks, never allowed to accomplish his mission. The Institute will be exposed, unable to send out agents again. That is the way of Tibet. His crime was a crime against Tibet. There will be an accounting, in this life or the next.”

She stared at him as if about to argue. “You would trade yourself for that?”

“If it is the only way, yes. It’s not prison I fear, it’s standing in the way of the truth.”

She broke from his gaze and looked back toward the mountain. “ Yan que yong you hong hu zhi ,” she murmured.

Shan touched her. “I’m sorry?”

Meng gave a tiny, sad smile. “Nothing. It’s something my mother used to say about me. The story of my life, she would say. I was speaking to the mountain, not to you.”

But Shan had heard. “Little sparrow who dreams of swans,” she had said.

Meng suddenly embraced him, very tightly, very quickly, then turned to the first flag and recited the mantra as she kneaded the dirt off the cotton.

“I have to go,” he reminded her.

“I know. I want to finish this.”

He left her there. When he reached his truck he looked up. In the distance she was just another peasant, wringing blessings out of the old cloth.

* * *

The constable at the Baiyun post had to invoke Meng’s name to convince the headquarters office to transfer the call to the guesthouse. “He is loading bags into his car,” the Tibetan nervously reported. He kept looking over Shan’s shoulder. Sansan watched from the holding cell.