Eliot Pattison - Beautiful Ghosts

Suddenly boots pounded the floor of the corridor. The door flew open. A young officer, one of Tan’s adjutants, burst into the room. “Colonel,” the man said in an urgent voice. “Director Ming is calling troops out of the base. He’s talking with Lhasa and Beijing. He says they found bodies. Dead Chinese, a massacre,” he said. “Killed by Tibetans.” As he spoke phones began ringing at the desks outside and a siren rose from the street.

Thirty minutes later they stood at the edge of a field in the southern valley, surveying a chaotic scene. Ming stood in the middle of the field, fifty yards away, frantically directing workers with shovels and buckets, ordering soldiers onto the field. Two military police cars sat on the road, emergency lights flashing.

“By the time word spreads in Lhasa people will be saying there is an uprising in Lhadrung,” Tan growled. He called for a radio operator, with orders to reach army headquarters in Lhasa.

The troops had not known what to expect, Shan saw. Most were in combat gear, with grenades slung on their belts. Two dozen had formed a perimeter guard, establishing a square fifty yards to the side, while others were erecting a large military tent, a command post, near the center of the square, where Ming was assembling a field station of his own.

A heavy truck arrived from the direction of the guest compound and soldiers began unloading tables, chairs, and metal cases under the supervision of one of Ming’s assistants. Ming himself strutted along a trench, barking orders as soldiers hastily dug, pausing to exclaim excitedly to his assistants, or pose for a photograph, jumping into the trench, then jumping out again. The young woman with the close-cropped hair was at a folding table near the trench, several artifacts arrayed before her. A soldier presented her with one of the metal cases. She opened it and began removing small trays packed with brushes, lenses, and metal instruments.

A farmer had come to the compound the night before with a small jade object which he had plowed up in a low mound in his barley field, the woman explained in answer to Yao’s questions. She pointed to the farmer’s discovery, which sat on a towel in the center of the little table. It was the front half of a dragon, intricately carved of jade, part of what had been a handle, perhaps for a cane or fly whisk. With a needle-like probe the woman pointed to what had excited the museum team.

“The claws?” Yao asked.

“There’s five,” Shan said. “You found it in these trenches?” he asked.

The woman dropped a cloth over the jade, studiously ignoring Shan.

Shan met Yao’s stare. There was only one family authorized to use the five-clawed dragon in imperial China. “What have you found?” Yao demanded of the woman in a slow, simmering voice.

“The farmer’s family already had been digging when we arrived. Started the trench around the old foundation they had uncovered. Director Ming himself found the Chinese artifact,” she added. Jade was not commonly used in Tibet. “By the time the rest of us arrived he and the farmers had excavated a stone chest. Inside was a grand treasure. She bent and lifted the lid of a long metal case, revealing an elaborate silk robe, in yellow and blue, embroidered with cranes, dragons, pheasants, and other creatures, including one whose leg appeared around a fold, a leg bearing five claws. “It’s centuries old. Ching dynasty. And this was found with it, from the ancient reactionaries. Things unseen for two hundred years.” She uncovered an old piece of rice paper. “It removes all doubt.”

But Shan had seen the robe, only the day before at Fiona’s house. And Yao had a similar piece of rice paper in his room, given to them by Liya. The woman had another of the bounty posters, as if people in Lhadrung had collected them two hundred year ago, kept them for a special reason. Yao pointed to two lines of handwritten Tibetan script at the bottom of the poster. “Killed by order of the Stone Dragon Lama,” Shan read. The letters were faded, probably had been placed there two hundred years before. It would be the perfect closing to the political parable Ming was writing. A senior lama had killed the amban, and Tibetans had essentially admitted it. Shan leaned over the writing to better see the second line. “Conquered in Zetrul Puk,” he read. But to Shan’s eye it did not appear old. Someone had recently added the reference to the Miracle Cave.

“But you reported that people had been killed,” Yao interjected.

The woman pointed toward the far side of the mound, where a knot of soldiers stood. Yao and Shan stepped cautiously to their side. They were guarding several skulls, and the remnants of skeletons. Another, deeper trench had been dug nearby, exposing a stone wall and a small square portal, a doorway no more than thirty inches high. As they watched another skull was placed beside the others already in front of the soldiers.

The colonel had taken Ming aside and was speaking to him. Tan’s face seemed as tightly clenched as his fists. As they watched, a dozen soldiers climbed back into one of the trucks, which drove away.

After several minutes Shan stepped as inconspicuously as possible toward Tan’s car and the remaining trucks, leaving Yao making notes by the trenches. Perhaps he could slip onto a truck as it left. He searched the faces of the soldiers. There may be some who recognized him, who would be willing to help him leave, if only because they knew how much his presence usually upset Tan. He recognized a middle-aged sergeant who acknowledged him with a scowl. But as he approached the man a hand closed around his arm.

“We still need you, comrade,” an oily voice warned. Ming.

“Surely your work is done,” Shan said, after a long moment. “You can return to Beijing a hero.”

Ming acknowledged the comment with a pleased nod. “But I still will not have my thieves, or the American his killer. We have not changed the plans. The supplies are to be ready by noon at that prison. Four teams are going into the mountains, with scientists and soldiers, and trustees,” he added, staring pointedly at Shan.

For once Shan agreed with Ming. Shan needed to be in the mountains. “Nothing has changed,” he confirmed. Nothing, and everything. Yao and Corbett had not caught their criminals but now it was Ming who worried Shan the most.

Ming glanced at his watch. “Things are under control here. Now that we know what we have found, the tedious work begins. For professionals,” he said with a nod toward his white-aproned assistants. “I am leaving to supervise the departure of the mountains teams. Would you indulge me on the way?” he asked, gesturing toward his car. As Shan climbed inside he saw Yao standing with Tan. Both men were staring at him. Ming followed his gaze and waved at the two men.

“What’s that they say?” the director asked in a quick aside to Shan. “Ah yes. The gods will be victorious,” he called out in Mandarin to Tan and Yao, then started the car. “Tremble and obey!” he called out through the open window, and laughed.

“Look in the backseat,” the director said as he accelerated out of the field, spinning dirt and gravel into the air. There was another metal case lying on its side on the seat. Shan twisted and unfastened the latches, opening it as Ming gave a little sound of amusement. The bottom half of the case was filled with ice, which cooled several bottles of carbonated orange drink. Shan opened two, handing one to Ming.

“You and I started badly,” Ming said. “We had to overcome our natural distrust,” he suggested. “But now so much has happened. I never expected that this county hid so many opportunities. I will need someone on the ground who knows how to get things done among Tibetans. An operations director, let’s say.”