Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

Khodrak tossed the napkin by his cup across the table. Tenzin still wore the dust from the dung pile on his face. "You should wash," he said in an offhand tone. He studied the faces of the others at the table.

Shan watched Tenzin and Khodrak with a chill. Tenzin kept his gaze on the table with studied disinterest, then pulled his hands from the table and folded them on his lap where Khodrak could not see them. But Shan could. They formed a mudra, with the little fingers linked, the middle two fingers of each hand bent inward, and the tips of the index fingers and thumbs touching. It was called the Spirit Subduer, and it seemed aimed at Khodrak. Suddenly a light flashed, and Shan looked up to see the attendant with a camera, busily snapping photographs of Shan and his companions.

"Perhaps you have heard," Tuan said in an oily voice, "that my deputy was assassinated."

Tenzin stared at his hands a moment, his gaze drifting slowly toward Khodrak. The two men exchanged a hard, challenging stare. Shan watched the exchange in confusion. Tenzin had disappeared the night of Chao's killing. But surely they didn't suspect him or they would have seized him already. Suddenly he recalled Gyalo's words to his yak. Shan didn't know what swam in sacred waters. Gyalo had meant nagas. Khodrak might have been searching for a man connected to the water deities. Tenzin had gone from the hermitage once to get black sand from the nagas. He could have been seen by an informer as he performed a ceremony at a river. The howlers despised nagas as symbols of the Tibet's oldest traditions. If they were to detain Tenzin and interrogate him about his interest in water deities, even if they had to wait for the mute Tibetan to write his confession, they would eventually find out about the hermitage, about Gendun and Shopo.

"Was that the reason Padme Rinpoche was walking on the high plain?" Shan asked abruptly, trying to deflect Tuan's attention. "Helping restore public order?"

Tuan looked at Shan intensely, but without showing emotion.

Nyma and Lhandro frowned at Shan and fixed him with an annoyed stares. Shan was implying that Padme had been engaged in something other than religious pursuits.

But Khodrak seemed to find nothing extraordinary about the inquiry. "Everyone must be vigilant in times like these," the chairman suggested, with an appreciative nod toward Shan. "When so much important progress is at hand, that is when reactionaries are most apt to strike. Murder. Kidnapping. At least it validates our work."

"Kidnapping?" Shan asked.

"Surely you heard about the abbot of Sangchi. The blessed leader of such an important institution. A model of right thinking for all Tibetans. Creator of the Serenity Campaign. Another martyr of our cause."

"The newspapers say the abbot of Sangchi is being taken to India."

"We know now the abbot was kidnapped by the most radical elements of the resistance," Tuan interjected. "Possibly the same ones who killed Deputy Director Chao not fifty miles from here. They will doubtlessly try to harm the abbot as well."

Shan looked at the table, trying to steady his nerves. What were they suggesting? That they knew the infamous Tiger was in the vicinity? That the lost abbot was imprisoned by the Tiger somewhere nearby? Surely not, or the region would be saturated with Public Security troops.

"Dinner," Khodrak announced abruptly, smiling smugly. "Dinner will be served soon, in the assembly hall. Take a moment. Enjoy our hospitality." The Chairman rose and left the room, Tuan following close behind. Shan looked after Khodrak. Take a moment. The words seemed to be an idiom for Khodrak, a signature. The chairman spoke them gently, even graciously. But Shan had heard those words before. They were also an idiom of tamzing, the struggle sessions where correct thought was beaten, figuratively and literally, into wayward citizens. Take a moment, a tamzing leader would say to show his or her good nature. Take a moment to reconsider before we resort to more painful means to wrench you back to the Party's true path.

Shan lingered at the top of the stairs by the office, tempted to venture inside. As the monk called for him to join the others and he slowly descended, voices were raised in anger in the chamber beyond the office, but he could make out no words. He followed the others to what appeared to be a rear door opening to the courtyard between the buildings, and had almost reached Lokesh, when a hand closed around his arm.

"Comrade Shan," a stern voice said behind him.

Shan turned to look into the black, pebble-like eyes of Director Tuan. Tuan gestured toward an open office door. Shan hesitated, watching his friends disappear out the door. His chest tightening, his throat bone dry, he entered the chamber.

A small metal desk was pushed against the window to make room for four overstuffed chairs arranged around a low table with a long lace doily. Tuan closed the door behind them, lowered himself into one of the deep chairs and motioned for Shan to do the same. "Comrade," he repeated, like a cordial greeting this time.

Shan sat on the edge of the chair opposite Tuan and nodded slowly. On top of the lace were several stacks of the Serenity pamphlets he had seen at the lake.

Tuan drummed his hand on the arm of the chair as he examined Shan, looking at his tattered boots and patched clothing. "It must be difficult for a man like you," he began.

Shan nodded again. They knew his name. But surely they had not had time to find out who he was, that he was still officially a lao gai prisoner.

"How long have you been in Tibet?" Tuan pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and placed them on the wide arm of the chair.

"Five years."

Tuan seemed to welcome the news. "Most don't last a year. I salute you. People like you are the real worker heroes. Anyone could work back home in a factory. But you are here, in the front lines of our great struggle." He picked up the cigarettes and tapped them on the arm of the chair. Shan had met Religious Affairs officials before. Most were soft and bureaucratic, biding their time before rotating back to a better office in eastern China. But Tuan was different. Tuan was like a hard-bitten soldier. Tuan had already finished one career at Public Security.

"Your friends said you were traveling north, and came out of your way to bring Padme home. Padme said you were traveling with salt."

Tuan wasn't asking about nagas, or Yapchi and Lhasa, none of the questions asked by Colonel Lin. Indeed, Tuan didn't seem to be interrogating him so much as testing him somehow. "It's a tradition they have," Shan said.

"There are taxes to be paid to the salt monopoly," Tuan observed. "You could get a bounty for reporting them. I could arrange it, even have it deposited somewhere. They need never know."

Shan forced a small conspiratorial smile which caused Tuan to raise his hand, palm outward. "You've thought of it. Excellent." He lifted the cigarette pack to his nostrils and inhaled, lit one of the cigarettes, and carefully set it in the ashtray on the table. "You could not be blamed for the companions you acquire when traveling. A man like you has the opportunity to meet all types of Tibetans."

Shan clenched his jaw. "My companions brought an injured monk here," he reminded Tuan.

The Director's lips curled in a thin smile as he inhaled the smoke drifting from the table. It was as if he were using the tobacco as incense. "It's an untamed land, this region. Criminal elements in hiding on every mountain. The one who killed Deputy Director Chao is out there. He must have attacked Padme."

"You make it sound as though you know who it is."

"Of course. It is the same war that started when the liberation army arrived. It has never really concluded, it's just less visible."

"You mean you don't care who it is."