Eliot Pattison - Beautiful Ghosts

Dolan still seethed with anger, but not at Ming. His furor seemed directed to the two dead monks he had found, as if they had cheated or mocked him somehow. If he seemed determined to find the treasure before, now he seemed fanatic, obsessed beyond words with finding the amban’s treasure. He ordered the remaining hill people to leave, handing each of them some American currency as they departed. Khan stayed closer now, brandishing his rifle, holding it at the ready as he walked a circuit around the ruins.

“I don’t understand,” Ko said as they ate fried rice prepared by Lokesh. “There are two policemen, one from America, one from Beijing. How can Dolan act like this?”

Corbett stared into the fire. “He called me over while you were hauling rocks. He reminded me he had filed complaints about me, saying I was on some kind of vendetta, that I seemed on the verge of some sort of mental breakdown. He said no matter what I said, what I reported, he would have at least four witnesses ready to say the opposite, he would have phones ringing off the hook in Washington. He said if I helped him he would guarantee I would be the next regional chief of the Bureau. I expect he already knows Yao understands the same applies to him in Beijing.”

“They only have the one rifle,” Ko said in an insistent voice. “I could stop that Khan, jump him with a shovel.” He surveyed his companions in silence a moment. “You have no plan,” he said in a voice full of accusation. “Why did we come? I thought you were going to stop them. Instead you carry rocks for them.”

Corbett and Yao did not react. Shan gazed at his son with a plaintive expression but could think of no words that Ko would hear.

“We saw Khan kill McDowell. We have the right to kill him.”

“No,” Shan said. “No one has the right to kill.”

Ko gave a snort of disgust, threw what remained of his meal on the ground, and disappeared into the shadows.

“Every emotion Ko has,” Lokesh observed in a matter-of-fact tone, “has a fire in it.” Before Shan could react the old Tibetan reached behind a stone and produced a handful of twigs. “Juniper,” he whispered, and Shan realized that Lokesh, at least, had a plan. “I hid it, on the festival day, just in case.” As he dropped the twigs into the flames he saw the query on Corbett’s face. “Their smoke will attract the deities,” he assured the American.

But as the twigs burned it was Dolan who appeared, staring at them with a dark expression, swaying for a moment, apparently feeling the effects of his whiskey. “We have one day,” he announced. “I have to get back to board meetings in the States.” The anger had left his voice, replaced by something cold and venomous. Ming had abandoned him, and the dead monks seemed to have defied him somehow. He was clearly not used to being defied. “You are going to take me to the top chamber, to the amban’s treasure, tomorrow. You will help me pack everything we find, load it, then I will let you get on with your miserable lives.”

No one responded. Dolan kept glancing toward the open hole where Gen-dun spoke with the dead. “You will forget everything. Nothing here can be so important to you,” he said in an oddly plaintive tone. He reached into his pocket and produced a checkbook, began writing. “I am not an evil man, I am just a very busy man.” He tore off a check. “One hundred thousand dollars,” he announced, and dropped it at Shan’s feet. Shan did not look at it. Dolan wrote again. “Another hundred thousand,” he said, and dropped the second check onto Corbett’s lap. Corbett ignored it. “Dammit. You people have nothing to gain and everything to lose. This is just business.” He wrote a third time and dropped a check in front of Yao. “Made out to cash. Use it any way you want.”

Corbett slowly picked up the check on his lap. “Fine. I’ll help,” the FBI agent said. “But for a hundred thousand dollars I want you to say you killed the girl in Seattle.” He dropped the check into the fire. The action seemed to upset Dolan, who dropped to his knees and for a moment seemed about to reach into the coals to extract the smoldering check. “We’re alone,” continued Corbett. “No tape recorders. No witnesses who could be relied upon back home. Only us. You’ve already said our testimony will mean nothing. I just paid you a hundred thousand dollars. Just business.”

When Dolan looked up to return Corbett’s stare, his eyes seemed dull, almost confused. “I just want to get what’s mine and leave. I can make you rich,” he added in a hollow voice. “That’s all anybody wants.” As he spoke Lokesh rose and approached the brazier. His proximity seemed to disturb Dolan, who looked at Khan, standing fifty feet away with the rifle.

“We are finishing that cairn,” Lokesh said to Dolan, “to honor the abbot and that British monk. Each of us will put on one more stone and offer a prayer.”

They all stood. Dolan said nothing as they began to move toward the cairn, did not react when Ko slipped out of the darkness to pick up the two remaining checks where they had fallen.

Lokesh had found a prayer scarf somewhere, probably one of those that sometimes blew around the rubble, and laid a corner under the top of the stones. No one spoke as they laid on the stones, Ko lifting a large flat one for the cap. Without speaking they formed a half circle around the cairn, facing the open chamber where the dead lay. The stars were coming out and the single butter lamp by the cairn sputtered in the sand and seemed about to go out.

Suddenly Dolan appeared out of the shadows, a flat rock in his hands. He placed it on the cairn. “I didn’t mean to disturb them,” he said in an uncertain voice. “I wouldn’t have…” he began again, and stopped. “Ming should have told me,” he said, and awkwardly bent to pick up another rock. “What went on fifty years ago between China and Tibet, that has nothing to do with me, you know.” He spoke quickly, gripping the rock tightly, using two hands as if the small stone had grown immensely heavy. He looked up, suddenly angry again. “Let it be a lesson!” he growled. “Tomorrow’s the last day,” he added in warning, and marched away.

“He has become,” Corbett said, “the scariest person I have ever known.”

“His deity is gasping,” Lokesh observed in a heavy voice.

They wrapped themselves in blankets for the night, Khan standing watch with the rifle, Ko appearing and settling into a corner of the crumbling walls. Shan dropped into a troubled sleep and awoke abruptly, from a terrible nightmare, though he could remember nothing but a great sense of loss. It had been about Ko, something terrible happening to Ko, because Shan and the others had failed to act. He rose and, finding Khan asleep at his post, wandered into the moonlit ruins. He found himself in the foregate, sitting on the broad lintel stone Gendun had used on the festival day. He did not know how much time passed, an hour or more, when suddenly a voice spoke at his side.

“Why did you bring him? He’s going to get himself killed. He acts like he wants to get himself killed.” It was Yao.

The words did not hurt as much as Shan might have expected, because the thought had already occurred to him. “When this is over they will take him away,” Shan said. “Dolan and Ming know he is a witness. He will be buried in the gulag so deep no one will ever find him. You know what they do when they want prisoners to disappear, if they don’t execute them. They’ll change his name, give him a new tattoo, a new background, destroy his old file. I’ll have no way of ever finding him. I’ll never see him again.” The last words came out in such a rush of emotion Shan bent and buried his head between his hands.

“When this is over Dolan and Ming will be in prison.”