Eliot Pattison - The Lord of Death

“We were thinking some exercise would do you good. A little ride, a little walk, a little talk.”

“Talk?”

“About the dead bodies you saw that day.”

“That minister?”

“The other.”

“You mean the blond one,” the soldier said.

Zheng leaned forward, her head cocked toward the man.

“The Westerner,” Shan nodded.

“The one who disappeared. The ghost.”

“We are,” Shan declared as he handed him the clothes that hung on a peg by his bed, “great believers in ghosts.”

A quarter hour later Shan and Madame Zheng stood in the shadows of the garage bay at the rear of Tsipon’s warehouse as Jomo eased the long green sedan into the bay and shut the door. It took less then two minutes before an angry figure in a business suit and tie burst through the side door.

“Idiot!” Tsipon raged. “I need that car! The trial is starting!”

Jomo dangled the keys in his hand, then retreated to the opposite side of the car, the keys dangling in his hand. “You sent men to kill my father.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Get in the car. You can drive me.”

“They were two truck drivers, outsiders. You paid them to do things, illegal things.” Jomo stopped at the trunk of the sedan.

Tsipon looked at his watch. “You’re talking nonsense, Jomo. I am your employer. I am your father’s landlord.”

As Jomo opened the trunk Tsipon’s expression darkened. He darted toward his mechanic with a snarl, then halted abruptly when Jomo threw a bulky object at him, hitting him in the chest. A large yellow bucket.

Shan shifted forward in the shadows. Jomo was only supposed to have told Tsipon he knew about the yellow bucket.

“I wondered about the bounties offered for the monks, how they would be paid. The drivers I asked said the manager of the truck stop was to be shown the gaus. The manager and I had a chat late last night, locked in the workshop. I persuaded him to tell me that when he saw the gaus he was supposed to leave a note in a yellow bucket by the road. I didn’t have to ask who owned the bucket. My father, then the monks. Trying to kill holy men must be habit forming.”

“Your father has been trying to get killed for years,” Tsipon said in a brittle voice. “He’s unstable. The only reason he stays out of the yeti factory is because I protect him.”

Shan took another step forward as Jomo’s eyes began to smolder. “I remember when I was young. You retrieved us out of the gutter. You would bring things. Food. Blankets. And he always had money to run the tavern, even when he couldn’t pay you rent. I thought it was kindness.”

Tsipon seemed to collect himself. He straightened his tie. “I was in a position to help him. You would begrudge a favor? As the senior Tibetan Party member in the county I had an obligation to help with his rehabilitation.”

“The help never came from a cooperative or a collective or the county welfare office. It came from you. And every time you made a delivery there was a bottle of alcohol with it.”

“He had great pain. A lot of past that needed to be erased.”

Jomo gazed into the trunk, reached in to extract a tire iron before shutting it.

“There’s work to do, Jomo,” Tsipon reminded him. “Drive me to the trial and come back for an inventory.”

“People never talk about the members of the resistance. It’s as if they were old demons whose names are taboo. I remember paintings of those demons. My father kept some in a chest. All around the big demons were little demons. You were one of the little demons.”

“Ridiculous. The rebels were criminals. Worse, traitors.”

“You were from a shepherd family in the high ranges, where the pastures have been closed by the border patrols. But what you don’t know is that some of those shepherds moved their herds to valleys west of here, past old Tingri town. I drove over there yesterday, while you were at your new hotel. I asked the old ones there about you. I found an old woman who knew your family. They are all in India, like you have said. They all fled when the last rebels were destroyed. Except you stayed. You came to town. You were made the head of the agricultural collective. A teenager, as head of the collective. Who appointed you?”

“You’re a fool. I don’t have time-”

With a single powerful swing of the iron Jomo smashed the back window of the sedan. “Who appointed you?”

Shan took another uneasy step toward the pool of light by the sedan. Jomo was drifting far from their agreed script.

“I can have you back in the gutter by tonight!” Tsipon snapped.

Jomo inched forward, heaved the iron again and smashed the rear passenger window. “Who appointed you?”

Tsipon backed away toward the door he had come in, seemed about to flee when a long iron rod, one of the scraps Jomo kept for repairs, materialized out of the darkness, pressing against his belly.

“I remember your family,” came a raspy voice. Gyalo stepped out of the shadows, using the piece of iron like a staff for support.

The color drained from Tsipon’s face. “You were dead!” he gasped.

Shan took another step forward, prepared to leap between Gyalo and Tsipon. Jomo had dropped Shan off at the municipal building, with instructions to meet at the infirmary, but he had obviously sensed Shan’s intentions, and taken a detour to the stable. Shan never would have expected Gyalo to have enough strength to reach the warehouse but Jomo’s words seemed to have given him new life.

“Good, simple people,” the former lama continued, both hands grasping the iron rod. “They tended the wounded, gave us milk and meat when they had some to spare. They had boys, two adolescents and a teenage boy I recall, all of whom helped, even in bringing in the bodies of our dead to the hiding place below the glacier, where I helped prepare them for the next life.” The old Tibetan stood tall and straight. He seemed to have lost several years of age.

“You were nothing but a beggar with a baby boy when I found you,” Tsipon continued, “both half dead of the cold. I gave you life.”

Gyalo’s hoarse laugh ended in a hacking cough. “I was a business proposition for you. You needed a floor show, a clown to attract customers to your new tavern.”

As Tsipon took another step toward the door the iron rod slammed against his leg, nearly knocking him off his feet. “There was only one person who wielded political power in this county when you were made head of the collective,” the former lama observed. “You were doing business even then, even as your own family was fleeing to be with the Dalai Lama. You gave Wu the resistance fighters and she gave you a prestigious appointment.”

“I told you it was Ama Apte. She traded her village for-” Tsipon’s lie died away as Shan finally stepped out of the shadows.

“It is possible,” Shan said, “that a man of your particular talents might have found a way to survive even when the people in this county finally learn who betrayed them that day. You could always find another lie, offer more jobs to quiet them down.”

“Exactly,” Tsipon said, as if Shan was offering to mediate. “You understand these things, Shan, you’re from Beijing. Tell them. The Youth Brigade was always going to win. I had nothing. It was over. Why shouldn’t I try to salvage my life? Everyone had to pick up the pieces and move on.”

“Everyone else helped their families and the monks,” Jomo pointed out. “You helped the Youth Brigade.”

Tsipon glanced uncertainly at the mechanic, then turned to Shan as if for help.

“For you it was always about business, like Gyalo said,” Shan said. “Back then, and the day Minister Wu died.”

Tsipon inched toward the door. “All that is over with. They have their murderer. I’m a witness, you know. Interfering with a witness is a crime.”