Eliot Pattison - Water Touching Stone

The office was empty. Shan rushed past a secretary station into a large room with a gleaming desk made of chromed metal and glass. There was nothing on the desk but a red telephone and a photograph of a red sports car.

Lokesh, at the large plate glass window behind the desk, made a quiet chuckling sound. Shan pulled the Tibetan back from the center of the glass and peered around the edge. The window opened onto the center of the compound, a yard framed on three sides by buildings. A baseball game was being played. Vehicles had been pulled to the side, and at least two dozen spectators sat on the hoods and roofs of the vehicles to watch the spectacle. Ko was there, running about the way Deacon had at the nadam field, directing the players to stand a certain way, showing them how to hold the wooden bat.

Shan stepped back to his search as the batter hit the ball and the onlookers cheered again. The enterprising Ko did not appear to be involved in the details of his enterprises. The two drawers in the narrow table under the window held paper clips and pencils. Bookshelves held an assortment of mementos and books on management, including several in English. Thriving on Chaos, one said. The momentos were mostly familiar political tokens. A bust of Mao tse Tung. A piece of wood into which the words Persist Unswervingly had been carved, an abbreviation for a favorite motto of a past decade. Two cigarette lighters mounted in polished stone with brass plates noting Party conferences. Several pen and pencil sets. And a string of dingy plastic beads. Shan picked them up. A mala. Remembering that the demon who killed Alta had taken the boy's rosary, Shan put the beads in his pocket.

There were no lists of boys' names with calculation of bounties. There were no notes on Lau. On the wall was a photograph of Ko standing under a banner announcing the Poverty Eradication Scheme, shaking hands with a nearly bald man with a thin, hatchet-like face. Shan studied the man. On his suit coat was a large pin in the shape of the Chinese flag, with a battle tank underneath it. A memento for retired soldiers.

Shan wandered back to the secretary's desk. On it was a large envelope, return address Brigade headquarters in Urumqi, with Ko's name scrawled on it. Below Ko's name was a note. I wish all my managers understood the new Chinese economy as well as you, comrade. This will be our model project to explain what a market economy with Chinese characteristics really is. It was signed Rongqi.

Inside the envelope Shan found a glossy label bearing an image of mountains and the Potala in Lhasa, the traditional home of the Dalai Lama, now converted by Beijing to a tourist shrine. Superimposed over the image was the word Oracle, with a trademark symbol. Fresh from the sacred spring, it said underneath and then, at the bottom, ten ounces. On the side panels were more marketing words. Healing. Fortifying. Better Dreams. Taste the magic of Tibet.

Shan stared at it in confusion at first, but then he read the cover note again, and his throat went dry. The oracle lake at the Raven's Nest. The Poverty Eradication Scheme. Rongqi's hatred of the Tibetans. The assimilation of lost minorities into the economic process. The subversion of the Yakde Lama. Ko and his general had found the perfect project. The model for their new economy. Distribute the sacred waters of the Raven's Nest to the newly affluent Chinese of the eastern cities. Rongqi was a man who evolved with the economy, but not all the way. He would have his vengeance on the Yakde Lama, paying rich rewards for the boy's death and also for the Jade Basket, even annoint his own Yakde Lama, then he would rub his victory in the faces of the lama's survivors.

Shan's hand trembled as he lifted the simulated label that covered a series of index cards. Suggested marketing slogans, someone had ambitiously penned on the first card. Print image: sexy woman in a nightshirt, it said. Caption: "Psst! I've got a Tibetan sex secret for you!" The second said, Print image: Monk raising a bottle with a big smile. Caption: "In Tibet we say, lha gyal lo! Victory to the gods. Now I say Victory to you!"

There was more, but Shan could not bear to read them.

Suddenly horns blared from the vehicles at the baseball game. Shan dropped the envelope and pushed Lokesh toward the door. "Don't run," he said urgently. Don't look Tibetan, he almost said. He grabbed a heavy coat hanging on the back of the door and a baseball bat leaning in the corner. He threw the coat at Lokesh, who slipped it on, pulling its hood over his head. They walked down the hall, past the smiling janitor watching the desk, Shan in the lead with the bat on his shoulder. The woman waved goodbye. As they reached the door a group of men entered, a tall big-shouldered one in the center boisterously speaking of the game they had just played. Shan glanced at him and quickly looked away, then slowed to listen to the man's deep voice again. As he passed the man and exited the building Shan realized he had seen him before, wearing a white shirt that glared in the night, standing on the road in the Kunlun mountains.

Twenty minutes later they were in the cellar of the Maos' restaurant, Lokesh grinning as he offered the coat to the Mao's wardrobe. He paused to point out the gloves and hat in the pocket and the rich lining inside, synthetic fur in the pattern of a leopard. Shan smiled at his friend, feeling in debt to the deities who protected the old Tibetan, then began explaining to the Maos what he had learned. Wangtu, slumped in a chair in the corner, sat up and listened.

Moments later Lokesh called out in a somber tone. Shan turned and looked at him with a puzzled expression. The coat was reversible. Lokesh had put it on, leopard skin out, brown gloves on, a brown balaclava over his face, showing only eyes and mouth. He was holding the baseball bat, not as a batter would, but in one hand, raised over his shoulder. In his other hand was a long thin object which Fat Mao took for inspection. The Uighur pressed a button on its side and with a loud click a long blade appeared. A switchblade.

Shan gasped and stood as he realized what Lokesh had discovered. The demon in leopard form that had attacked the boy with the dropkas. The demon without a face. The demon had paws, and a shiny stick like a man's arm, the woman had said, without the fingers. He looked at the bat, wide at the top and ending like a wrist at the bottom. Jowa groaned loudly and turned to Shan with a look of shocked understanding. The boy had met the demon in mere leopard form. But Shan had to deal with the demon in Ko form.

Shan turned to Wangtu and studied the sullen Kazakh. "You have to make it happen," he said with a glance to Fat Mao, "you have to get the lie to Xu." He quickly explained what he had to do, then called the prosecutor's office from the pay phone at the post office, three blocks away, with Ox Mao listening. He asked for Miss Loshi and left a message with the secretary saying he was going to the town square, where he wanted to meet Prosecutor Xu with important information about Director Ko. A minute later Ox Mao left with a message to give to the bald man in the lobby, as Fat Mao gave hurried instructions to the others.

The sirens started five minutes later as the knobs converged on the square. Had Loshi bothered to call Ko first, Shan wondered, or had she contacted Bao directly? Ox Mao was behind the Ministry palace by then, watching the Red Flag limousine. Swallow Mao, the shy Uighur woman, stood in an alley a block away, where she could see Ox Mao. Jowa sat on a bench on the street opposite Shan, where he could see Swallow Mao. The signal came quickly. Jowa dropped the paper he was reading and raised both arms as if stretching. Shan stood, walking slowly, until he saw the shadow of the big car in the alley and stepped in front of it.

No one spoke as he climbed inside. The bald man drove fast, out of town, as Xu looked out the window, her eyes restlessly surveying the streets. Five minutes later they pulled onto a rocky track and climbed to the top of a small hill. They were at the edge of the desert, looking west toward the late afternoon sun. Xu silently walked to the edge of the knoll and down the other side. Shan followed, and found a short set of wooden stairs in severe disrepair. At the bottom Prosecutor Xu sat on a decrepit bench, beside a sign that leaned against the wooden post it had apparently fallen from. It had the flowing script of the Turkic language, but no Chinese.