Eliot Pattison - The Skull Mantra

Tan nodded. "Director Hu sent one to my office. My driver will drop it off tonight."

"And the prosecutor had an important meeting in Beijing. Something to do with water rights. Something about a Bamboo Bridge. We need to find out everything about it. It is not something I can do, not something you can do. But you have someone who can."

There was movement at the door. Feng had drifted back. Yeshe was standing in the shadows just outside the entrance.

"One more thing, Colonel. I need to know. In the Lhadrung uprising, did you have the thumbs of monks cut off?"

"No!" Tan spat. He stood up so fast his bench toppled over. He looked at Feng and back to Shan. The fire in his face did not stop Shan's steadfast stare. Slowly, the defiance in Tan's eyes faded and he seemed to swallow something hard. "The damned Buddhists," he said in a beseeching tone. "Why can't they give up?"

Tan dropped his eyes to the table. "Yes," he said in a much lower voice. "I knew the Bureau was cutting thumbs and I could have stopped them." He grimaced, straightened his tunic, and marched out of the barracks.

There was a heavy silence as Sergeant Feng and Yeshe stepped in. Feng righted the bench and began to sweep up the tobacco.

"How about you, Sergeant?" Shan asked. "Do you want it to stop this time?"

The sullen expression had not left Feng's face all day. "I don't understand anything anymore." He wrung his fingers together. "They shouldn't be killing my prisoners."

"Then help me."

"I am. It is my job."

"No. Help me." Shan glanced at Yeshe, who had moved toward his bunk. "Sungpo will be executed in three days. If he is, we will never know who the murderer is. And the 404th will be sacrificed."

"You're one crazy son of a bitch, thinking you can stop them," Feng muttered.

"Not just me. All of us." He gazed at his two exhausted companions. "In the morning, early, the Americans will come with maps. Photo maps. Yeshe will need to study them, and examine these disks." Shan pulled the envelope from his pocket and handed it to Yeshe. "It will take several hours."

He turned to Feng. "I want you to join Jigme in the mountains. Four eyes are better than two. I want you to stay until you find where the demon lives."

The sergeant seemed to shrink. Then his eyes turned up, sad but determined. "How?"

"Go to the shrine by the Americans. See if the hand of Tamdin is still there. If it is, follow it when it leaves. If it's gone, find who has been leaving prayers for protection against dogbite. And follow them."

Feng dropped into the bench. "You mean leave you. It's not in my orders." The words were spoken not in protest, but as a chagrined declaration. "I don't know how to read prayers," he muttered. "That Jigme, he won't either."

"No. You will take someone with you who does know. An old man. I will arrange for you to meet him in the market."

"How will I recognize him?"

"You already know him. His name is Lokesh."

Tyler Kincaid seemed highly amused. As they cleared the security checkpoint at the county border, he accelerated the truck and made a whooping sound, the kind Shan had only heard before from cowboys in American movies. Rebecca Fowler turned and pulled away the blanket that covered Shan. He climbed up from the floor and sat in the back seat.

"They never really check," she said in a taut voice. "Just a wave."

"Like some big MFC," Kincaid cracked. He tried to look at Shan, who was rubbing the circulation back into his legs. He had been lying on the floor for nearly two hours, since they had left Yeshe with a stack of photo maps at Jade Spring. "Someone said you were a big man in the Party once. Said you took on the chairman and lost."

"Nothing so dramatic."

"But that's why you're here, isn't it? You took on the MFCs. They're the ones who put you in prison, right?" Kincaid asked, in the same lighthearted tone.

"Someone must be living a very unfulfilled life, to waste time talking about me."

Fowler glanced back with a grin.

"And you, Mr. Kincaid, is your injury healing?"

The American held up his arm, still covered with a long bandage. "Sure. Good as new soon. High-altitude healing, it's great conditioning for the climb up Chomolungma."

"We should do Gonggar first," Fowler suggested. They were going to drop off brine samples at the airport for shipment to Hong Kong. Behind Shan sat two large square wooden crates, each holding twelve stainless-steel cylinders. The crates were their cover.

"There's a jacket," she explained. "With a mine logo. Put it on. At the airport just help with the crates like you work for us."

"But afterward," Shan asked, "do you have authority to go to Lhasa? I could find a ride with a truck driver."

"And how do you get back? How many truck drivers are going to risk hiding a stranger without papers at the checkpoint? We'll just go see Jansen at the UN office. I want to talk to him about the skull shrine."

"It's just that you shouldn't be involved, shouldn't be at further risk," Shan said. "You're risking too much already."

"I want this thing over," Fowler said with a new tone, almost pleading. "If you get caught it may never be over." She turned toward the back seat. The haunted countenance Shan had seen after she returned the demon's hand was there again. "They came last night. I guess that's what you were trying to warn me about."

"Who came?"

"Public Security. Not the major. Tyler called the major to complain. It was a squad of technicians, seemed like. All they did was search the computers. Looked at every hard drive and disk."

"Big MFC show," Kincaid observed with a small, sour smile. "Just to keep us scared. Routine. They know we help Jansen. We know they know. We know they want it to stop. They know if they push too hard the UN could get really interested, call out the watchdogs."

"The UN has watchdogs?"

"Human rights investigators."

Shan stumbled on the words. Human rights investigators, he repeated to himself. The Americans used the words so casually. They didn't come from another part of his world. Surely they came from a whole different planet. He looked out the window and sighed. "What did the major say when you called?" he asked.

"Couldn't get through," Kincaid replied. "Busy with preparations for the American tourists."

"One of them talked a lot," Fowler continued nervously. "He kept going at me, taunting me like he hated Americans. Asked if I knew the penalty for espionage. Said it was death, no matter who you were." She looked at Kincaid. "No one would stand up for us then. Not the UN. Nobody."

Kincaid felt her gaze and turned to her, strangely affected by her tone. "It's all right," he said uncertainly. "We'll be okay. You know there's no damned spies. Just their damned games." His hand moved across the console and rested on her leg.

"I don't know," she said, speaking to the window. "I've been so jumpy. I get scared for no reason. Premonitions."

"About what?" Kincaid asked.

"Nothing. I mean, nothing, exactly. Like smelling something rotten for a second, then it's gone, something in the wind." She pushed his hand away.

"Everyone's jumpy," Kincaid said. "Ever since the knobs arrived. They killed a man at the prison." Shan noticed that the American was wearing a piece of heather in his pocket.

"They can't do that, can they?" Fowler asked. There was a small tremble in her voice. "At the prison. Luntok said they're on strike, and the knobs have machine guns. He says it's like the old days. He's scared. Is that where you-?"

Why was it so hard for him to talk with Fowler about the 404th? He broke away from her green eyes and looked out the window. They were following a wide river lined with willows. "I'm scared, too," he said. Kincaid was right. Everyone was jumpy.