Eliot Pattison - The Lord of Death

“You’re nothing but a gulag convict,” Tsipon muttered. “Worthless to society. They were always going to take you for something.”

Strangely, Tsipon tested the manacles, stretching their short chain tight as if he did not think they could be real. His expression as he looked up at Shan wasn’t anger but stunned disbelief. “They can’t run the mountain without me,” he ventured in a hollow voice.

“Negotiate, Tsipon,” Shan offered. “Keep negotiating. The government’s priority is to pursue every scent of corruption, especially when high levels are involved. A new murder trial would be messy since Americans would have to be brought into it now. Madame Zheng came here not for the murder, but for the corruption investigation against Minister Wu. Who knows? You may have a chance to escape a bullet if you cooperate on the corruption charge and give evidence against those truck drivers.”

“Once every Tibetan in this county wanted her dead,” Tsipon said to the floor. “They would have stood in line to pull the trigger.”

More officers appeared, guns at the ready, eyeing the Tibetans suspiciously. Madame Zheng snapped a command and they lowered their weapons, then surrounded Tsipon and turned him toward the door. “They can’t run the mountain without me,” he repeated in a bleak voice as he was led outside. They were the last words Shan heard him speak.

Shan turned to speak with Madame Zheng, but she was gone. He found her in her limousine, the rear door open, waiting for him. “I need a report from you,” she declared after he climbed in and the car began to move. “The kind you would have written ten years ago.”

“I was sent to the gulag for writing reports like that.”

She looked him over. “There’s nothing more we can do to you.” For the first time Shan saw the trace of a grin on her face.

“Cao will not like it.”

“Major Cao will be returning to Lhasa within the hour.”

Shan looked out the window and considered her request. “I need doctors, real doctors,” he declared. “I want one to be sent to Tumkot village, to care for a woman who was stabbed. I want another one sent to the yeti factory. I will give you the patient’s name. And the monks from Sarma gompa. I want them all released.”

Madame Zheng extracted a small tablet and began to write.

The sun was edging over the mountains when Tan and Shan were met at the entry to the yeti factory by the facility’s senior officer on duty, a plump Chinese knob still displaying crumbs from his breakfast on his uniform.

“We’re here for one of your inmates,” Tan announced.

“I’ll need orders.”

“His name is Shan Ko,” Tan stated impatiently.

“That one?” the officer replied with a sneer. “He’s in isolation. I couldn’t release him even if I wanted to.”

The man’s defiance was like a salve to Tan’s wounds. Shan watched as a familiar fire rekindled in the colonel’s eyes. For a moment Shan almost interjected himself, to save the officer the torment that he knew was to follow but the man cast him a dismissive, arrogant glance and Shan stepped back to give Tan full rein.

Like a bird stretching a wing that had been broken, Tan lifted his arm and with a perverse zeal gestured the officer into a vacant office and closed the door. Shan could not hear many of the words they spoke, but the tones of the knob were unmistakable, shifting quickly from petulance to anger to fear. When Tan emerged from the room, the officer sat at a desk, muttering orders into a phone. He looked as though he had been hit by a truck.

Five minutes later Ko was wheeled toward them on a hospital gurney, his cardboard box of possessions at his feet. With a stab of horror Shan saw that half his scalp had been shaven clean. Then a quick inspection showed no incisions had been made. His son’s eyes were shut, his breathing shallow, beads of sweat on his brow. Shan whispered his name and shook his shoulder, with no response.

They stood alone in the entry, Tan’s fury having scattered even the security guards. After a moment the colonel gestured toward a sign that said PROCESSING and helped guide the gurney down the corridor. The admissions office adjoined a double glass door leading to the parking lot, where two ambulances sat, their drivers leaning against one, smoking.

Tan found the only uniformed man in the office, a junior officer who seemed to be in charge. “I want an ambulance and driver, now. With a full gas tank.”

“It’s not permitted to take the ambulance out of the county,” the knob protested, stepping into Tan’s path.

“You’ll get it back when I am finished with it,” Tan growled, fixing the man with his icy stare. “I am Colonel Tan, military governor of Lhadrung County. Keep talking and I’ll take you back with me.”

The man swallowed hard, glancing in confusion at Shan and the gurney, then let Tan pushed him aside.

Minutes later they were on the highway, heading east, Tan in the front passenger seat, Shan on a metal bench beside Ko’s narrow bed in the rear compartment. It would be several hours’ drive to Lhadrung.

Shan watched the high peaks slipping into the distance, his eyes fixed on the indentation on the horizon that marked the valley where Tumkot lay. He had taken supper there the night before, a peaceful, intimate meal with Ama Apte, Yates, Kypo, and his daughter. As Yates had presented a compass and climbing boots to his new niece, Kypo and Shan had helped Ama Apte, her arm in a sling, serve the meal. When they began to sit Ama Apte had arranged two more plates on the table and as if on cue a figure had appeared in the doorway. Jomo had stepped inside with an anxious expression, his half-hearted protests ignored as Ama Apte silently led him to a seat beside Kypo. Then she had gone to the door and pulled in someone else, a figure who struggled against her at first, then allowed himself to be led, limping, across the floor. Gyalo, washed, freshly bandaged, and looking strangely serene, was wearing the robe of a monk.

“It’s time you met Tumkot’s new lama,” Ama Apte had announced as she settled Gyalo on the bench beside her.

After the first hour Tan ordered the driver to halt. He motioned Shan out of the compartment to join him on a small knoll by the road. Shan watched in confusion as Tan gathered dried grass and twigs into a pile. Tan lit a cigarette, then with the same match ignited the small fire before reaching into his tunic and producing a familiar dog-eared file. “They took this from my office without my permission,” he observed in a flat voice. He ripped off the first page in the bound file, a description of Shan’s last disciplinary proceeding in prison, and dropped it into the flames. He extended the rest of the file to Shan like a solemn offering.

Shan accepted the file with a trembling hand and stared at it in silence. “Do you have a pen?” he asked at last.

A question lit Tan’s face, but he handed over a pen without a word.

Shan sat on a rock with the file in his lap. He carefully wrote his father’s name on the file and folded down the corners like an envelope before lighting a small cone of incense.

Somehow Tan understood. “A message to the dead.”

Shan nodded. “I haven’t been entirely honest with my father when I send him messages. He thinks I have been on some kind of pilgrimage with old Tibetans these past years. It’s time he understood.”

Tan did not reply, just gathered more wood to build up the fire before Shan dropped in the file.

“Congratulations,” the colonel said as they watched the last ashes float away toward the mountains. “You have officially become nobody.”

As they returned to the ambulance, Tan climbed into the back to sit by Shan. The colonel straightened the blanket over Ko, grasping his still-twitching hand when he finished. The colonel would feel the effects of his torture for weeks, Shan knew. They glanced awkwardly at each other then looked out the small window at the peaks of the Himalayas retreating on the horizon.