Eliot Pattison - Prayer of the Dragon

The landscape on the eastern side of the mountain was gentle, the slope sweeping outward for miles, interrupted by occasional outcroppings and a few low ridges that jutted like fingers from the main peak, joining with the matching slope of the neighboring mountain to create a wide, lush, and empty valley. Almost empty. In the distance, perhaps five miles away, was a small compound of white buildings, surrounded by half a dozen antenna masts and three huge white saucers that seemed to have been tipped by the wind. Satellite reception dishes.

Much closer to Shan, half a mile away, was the only other visible structure, an old dzong , one of the small mountain fortresses that had once dotted the Tibetan countryside. Centuries earlier, its builders had chosen its location well, laying its stonework at the end of one of the long, jutting ridges, where the finger of rock and grass abruptly plunged two hundred feet to the valley floor. Its crumbling five-story stone tower would once have been manned for signal fires. The narrow windows had been designed for archers. Later, after Tibet’s warring kings had been replaced by Buddhist leaders, many such dzongs had become monasteries or hermitages. Now, if Shan could safely enter the ruins, it would be a perfect perch for studying the land beyond.

He hurried across the high meadows, wherever possible using outcroppings to block the line of sight to the distant compound below, knowing that its sentinels could use powerful lenses to scan the landscape. He paused for a moment, ambushed by his emotions again, a voice within shouting that he had to return to the village. He would find Gendun beaten unconscious. He would find Lokesh lashed to a canque. He would reach the stable and find nothing but bloody spoons on the floor. The waking nightmares would not leave him, distracting him so completely he did not realize something vital about it until he was only fifty yards away from the dzong.

The building was inhabited. The narrow windows were glazed. The structure at the base of the tower was new, though built of stone in the traditional boxy, tapered wall style of the original dzongs. Flowers were planted along the walls. Prayer flags flapped in the shadows behind the tower. Not prayer flags, he realized as he ran toward the shadow of another outcropping. Laundry.

“You’re not a soldier,” a voice behind him suddenly declared. “You’re not a scientist. You don’t look prosperous enough for one of those damned miners.” The voice was oddly whimsical. “If I shot you right now, we could call it a socialist experiment and devise a sad, politically correct story of the path that led such an antisocial creature to his inevitable death by a bullet.” The words were spoken in fluid Mandarin, tinged with a Beijing accent.

Shan replied in a level voice as he turned to face the speaker, hands open at his side. “The particular experiment I represent was declared a failure years ago. What is left was considered not worth the price of a bullet.”

He was prepared to confront a soldier, an angry bureaucrat, anything but the figure in front of him. The man was a head taller than Shan, well groomed and athletic, with long blond hair going to gray that covered his ears. Resting in the crook of one arm was a high-powered rifle and a case for a compact set of binoculars hung from the belt that held up his khaki trousers. A brown cashmere scarf was tucked under the collar of his leather jacket, which covered most of a black T-shirt bearing the image of a red dragon over the legend, in English, BORN TO BE WILD.

“Then how do I classify you?” the stranger asked. “Animal, mineral, or vegetable?”

“Perhaps you believe in ghosts?” Shan ventured. He remained still as the stranger circled him, examining him from head to toe.

The man seemed to appreciate Shan’s wit. “I think,” the man said with a grin, “we will just call you the most interesting luncheon guest we have had in weeks.” He gestured Shan toward the dzong.

It was the most extraordinary new construction Shan had seen in Tibet. On the outside great care had been taken to keep the structure’s sixteenth-century appearance, right down to the small mound of mani stones near the door. But inside were touches that spanned the five centuries since. The entryway was flanked by two long portrait scrolls of Chinese emperors, hung over a beige fabric wall covering. Bamboo stalks grew out of an elegant willow green celadon pot. As the stranger left his rifle by the door, Shan leaned over the nearest painting of one of the early Ching emperors wearing a fur cap and yellow brocaded gown embroidered with dragons. It was not a reproduction. From a speaker somewhere behind the planter came the soft, hollow music of a wooden flute.

Shan followed his escort up two flagstone steps into a large room lined with a huge carpet in which were woven traditional Tibetan symbols. The left wall was covered, floor to ceiling, with shelves of books and that to the right with paintings, dramatic mountain landscapes, and maritime scenes, all in Western style. In the center of the floor was a huge overstuffed U-shaped sofa, arranged to give the occupants a view out a long row of windows in the far wall. As his escort paused, gazing toward a half-closed door by the paintings, Shan took tentative steps toward the windows, his eyes on a powerful telescope that stood on a tripod.

He paused and placed a hand on the sofa, pressing his fingers into the soft fabric. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. The house was impossible. It belonged in the Swiss Alps or the mountains of North America. Except for the homes of senior Party officials he had never seen such a residence in China, let alone on a remote mountain in Tibet.

“You may sit,” his companion said, still in perfect Mandarin. “The doctor does not begin dissections until after his morning refreshment.”

Shan did not sit but walked past the sofa, watching the westerner, glancing at the three doors that led out of the large, comfortable chamber, mentally tracking the distance to the entrance behind him, his instincts shouting out warnings. Soldiers must be near. Any moment he would be seized.

The blond man lounged on the sofa, hands behind his head, an amused grin on his face as he watched Shan. The closest of the three doors leading out of the room was open, revealing a sunlit chamber containing a large wooden desk. The shelves built into the wall behind it held three-ring binders and notebooks, dozens of them, with carefully printed labels too small for Shan to read from where he stood.

“I was not aware there were still palaces left in these mountains,” Shan remarked.

The westerner’s grin was honest, almost friendly. “Dr. Gao and I long ago decided the only good place of comfort is a hidden place of comfort.”

Shan lingered another moment at the office door. On the wall behind the desk were at least thirty photographs, in identical gold frames, most in black and white. Some were posed portraits of distinguished gatherings, many were of men shaking hands with victorious smiles, three were of a man standing beside models of rockets. One showed an actual rocket sprouting out of a cloud of smoke. A chill crept down Shan’s spine. Even from that distance he could recognize several of the men in the pictures. At least two were former general secretaries of the Party and three were past commanders of the People’s Liberation Army.

Sounds behind the door on the opposite side of the room drew his escort’s attention. Shan stepped to the second door, which led to a short flight of stone steps, beyond which he could see a chamber furnished only with a bamboo mat on the floor, three of its walls lined with the fragrant wood used in temples, the fourth consisting entirely of glass, opening toward the long fertile valley below. A Chinese man with close-cropped graying hair stood facing the window, both arms raised parallel to the ground, right arm bent backward, left slowly moving forward, in one of the traditional postures of Tai Chi, called Bending the Bow.