Eliot Pattison - The Skull Mantra

Li turned and pulled a truncheon from the belt of a soldier. He walked along the perimeter with a ravenous glare, waving the club. He stopped at the rear of the circle and pounded it against Trinle's back. Trinle did not react. Li shouted in fury for the major, who moved forward with uncertain steps and stopped ten feet from Trinle. Li moved to his side and seemed about to grab his gun.

Shan willed himself to step between them and Trinle. There was new movement at the side of the circle. Sergeant Feng appeared, with the lug wrench from the truck. It was over, Shan realized. That he had lost was no surprise. But that the 404th, and Yerpa, would be lost was unbearable. He ached for it to at least be over quickly. It would be fitting, he absently thought, if the bullet came from Sergeant Feng.

"Back away," he heard Feng growl. But the sergeant was not speaking to him. Feng turned and stood beside Shan, facing Li and the major. The mantra continued.

"You old pig," Li sneered at Feng. "You're finished as a soldier."

"My job is to watch over Comrade Shan," Feng grunted, and braced his feet as though preparing for an attack.

The mantra seemed to swell as it filled the brittle silence again. The major stepped back to his men and ordered them to pull the truncheons from their belts.

Tan materialized at Shan's side. His face was taut. He glanced at Shan with a strangely sad expression, then turned to face Li. "These people," he said, with a gesture that encompassed the circle, "are under my protection."

Li stared at Tan. "Your protection is worthless, Colonel," he snarled. "We are conducting an investigation of you. Corruption in the performance of duties. We revoke your authority."

Tan's hand moved to his holster. The major reached for his machine gun.

Suddenly there was a new sound above the chanting, the hissing of air brakes. They turned, aghast, to see a long shiny bus pulling to a halt. Windows were being pulled down.

"Martha!" someone called in English. "They're doing morning services. Get the damned film changed."

The tourists came out, single file, clicking their cameras, rolling video of the monks, of Shan, of Li and the knobs.

Shan looked into the bus. The man at the wheel was familiar, a face from the marketplace. With him, wearing a trim business suit with a tie, was Miss Taring of the Bureau of Religious Affairs. She began speaking about Buddhist rites, and the closeness of the Buddhists to the forces of nature.

She climbed out and offered to use an American couple's camera to take photos of them with the Chinese soldiers.

The major studied her for a moment, then quickly herded his men into the truck. Li stepped backward. "It doesn't matter," he spat under his breath, "we have already won." He waved to the Americans with an affected smile and climbed in the front of the truck with the major. In moments they were gone. Then, as abruptly as it had arrived, the bus, too, moved on.

Tan sat down in front of Gendun. Instantly the mantra stopped. Trinle appeared and knelt at Gendun's side.

"Tell me about the woman," Tan said.

"She seemed very happy. Then- there is nothing so terrible as the scream of someone unprepared for death. Afterward there were other voices, not hers. That's all."

"Nothing else?"

"Not until the second car. It drove up an hour later. Two doors slammed. There were shouts, a man called out for someone."

"Calling a name?"

"The man from below called 'Are you there?' He said he knew where the flower came from. He said, 'What do you mean I won't need the X-ray machine?' The man above said, 'Esteemed Comrade, I know where you should look.' The man below," Gendun continued, "said he would make a trade, for more evidence."

Shan and the colonel shared a glance. Esteemed Comrade.

"Then he moved up the slope. The voices were much lower, and faded as they climbed. Then there was another sound. Not a shout. A loud groan. Then ten, fifteen minutes later the lights of the car went on. I saw him, maybe a hundred feet from the car. The man in the car got out and ran down the road."

"You said you saw him in the lights."

"Yes."

"You recognized him?" Shan asked.

"Of course. I had seen him before, in the festivals."

"You were not scared?"

"I have nothing to fear of a protecting demon."

They reduced Gendun's testimony to a written statement, which Tan authenticated with his own chop. He did not ask Gendun to remain behind as the monks began to rise and fade into the heather.

"The next morning," Shan asked as Gendun moved to join his companions. "Was there anything unusual?"

"I left before the work crews arrived, as I had been warned. There was only the one thing."

"What thing?"

"The noise. It surprised me, how early they started. Before dawn. The sound of heavy equipment. Not here. Further away. I could only hear it, as though it came from above."

They made a solemn procession into the boron mine an hour later, Tan's car in front, the truck of soldiers summoned by Tan's radio, and finally, Shan and Sergeant Feng. They drove straight to the equipment shed, where they selected a heavy tractor with a digging bucket and the mine's bulldozer. The machines were already moving onto the dike by the time the first figures emerged from the buildings.

Rebecca Fowler ran toward them, then stopped and sent Kincaid back for his camera as soon as she recognized Tan. The colonel motioned for her to stop, then deployed soldiers to cut off access to the dike.

"How dare you!" Fowler exploded as soon as she was in earshot. "I'll call Beijing! I'll call the U.S.!"

"Interfere and I'll close the mine," Tan said impassively.

"Damned MFCs!" Kincaid barked, and began snapping photographs of Tan, of the license plates of the vehicles, of the machines and the guards. He paused as he saw Shan. He took another photo, then lowered the camera and stared at Shan uncertainly.

The tractor dug into the dike where it crossed the gorge, where it was the deepest, where Shan remembered seeing equipment in the satellite photos taken just before the dike was completed, where one final gap had remained just before the murder. It was twenty minutes before the bucket struck metal, another twenty minutes before they had confirmed that the car they had found was a Red Flag limousine and hooked it to the bulldozer.

The machine churned against the turf, ripping it apart, until it found traction. The engine heaved and for a moment everything seemed to stop. As the car slowly pulled free of the mud, there was an extraordinary sound, unlike any Shan had ever heard, a ripping, unworldly groan that shook his spine.

The bulldozer did not stop until it had dragged the car nearly to the head of the dike.

Shan looked inside and saw a briefcase.

"Open it," Tan said impatiently.

The door swung open easily, emitting an almost overwhelming smell of decay. Inside the case were Jao's tickets, a thick file, and a satellite photo, cropped down to the poppy fields.

The trunk was jammed. Tan grabbed a crowbar from the bulldozer and popped the lid open. Inside, shrunken within a colorful floral dress, was a young woman. Her mouth was drawn into a hideous grin. Her lifeless eyes seemed to stare right at Shan. Lying on her breast was a dried flower. A red poppy.

A horrifed moan escaped Tan. He turned and hurled the crowbar into the lake. He turned back, his face drained of color. "Comrade Shan," he said, "meet Miss Lihua."

Rebecca Fowler stood paralyzed, staring in mute horror into the trunk as Tan moved to the radio in his car. It seemed as though she was drying up as Shan watched, as though any minute she would crumble and blow away in the wind. For a moment he thought she would faint. Then she caught Tan's stare, and the resentment brought her strength back. She began barking orders for the bulldozer to move the car off the dike, for the machines to start filling the gaping hole, for dump trucks to be filled with gravel, then ran toward the hole, shouting for Kincaid.