Eliot Pattison - Bone Mountain

Shan stared at the Golok uncertainly, then, asking him once more to leave for the high ranges, he turned and jogged away. He found a game trail that ran parallel to the valley floor and had trotted northward on it for several minutes, watching for movement on the upper slopes and the shadows of caves, when suddenly two figures appeared on the trail in the distance- not walking so much as strolling, conversing, watching the ground as if hunting for something. Shan faded into the shadows between two rocks. He pushed back as far as he could in the cleft and watched, first with fear, then with confusion as two shadows passed by. One of the figures was singing a Tibetan pilgrim's song.

He scrambled out and leapt forward. "Lokesh!" he called out in alarm.

Thirty feet down the trail his old friend turned and offered his crooked grin. "Good fortune!" Lokesh exclaimed. "You can help us, Xiao Shan." His companion, wearing an amused grin, awkwardly raised a hand in greeting to Shan. Tenzin.

"Help with what?" Shan asked in exasperation, looking about for some place to hide the men.

"I told you," Lokesh said sheepishly. "Looking for medicine herbs. Tenzin wants to learn about herbs too."

"In the mountains, you said in the mountains."

Lokesh waved his hand around the landscape. "The mountains around Yapchi," he said with another grin. "Surely you remember. Jokar Rinpoche said it would help that officer. His heart wind is so distressed he could die."

"Tell me where," Shan said in a pleading voice. "Tell me where and I will get your herbs. Just go back. Now-"

His words choked in his throat. Two green uniformed soldiers stepped around a large tree less than a hundred feet away. From behind the soldiers a figure in a white shirt emerged, followed by half a dozen other Tibetans. Shan recognized the man in white. Director Tuan. Four of the others were oil workers, wearing the green jackets of the venture. But the other two wore the robes of monks.

Tenzin gasped as he saw Tuan, grabbed Lokesh and pointed urgently toward the trees above them, pushing him away from the trail. But another soldier appeared on the slope above, thirty feet away, and began speaking excitedly into a small radio.

A moment later a whistle blew from the direction of the camp. Shan saw more of Tuan's white-shirted guards running up the slope. There was no hope, no chance of escape. The soldiers and howlers had won.

Their captors swarmed around them. Lokesh lowered himself to the ground and began saying his beads. Tenzin seemed frozen, looking from Shan to Lokesh with a grim, apologetic expression.

But it wasn't the soldiers who stepped forward to claim the capture. Instead Tuan pulled a camera from a belt pouch and began taking photographs. Of Tenzin, of Lokesh, of the two monks who trotted forward and stood by Tenzin.

One of the monks grabbed Tenzin's hand in both his own. "Rejoice with us, Rinpoche," the monk said gleefully. "Our teacher is returned to us."

Rinpoche. Shan looked at the monk, more confused than ever. He had called the fugitive Rinpoche.

Tenzin, his face still grim, looked at the monk and sighed. "I am no longer your teacher," he said in his deep, melodious voice. "I am but a novice again, and have found new teachers," he added, and gestured toward Lokesh and Shan.

The monk looked injured. Lokesh stared in wonder.

Tuan grimaced. "The abbot of Sangchi will learn to teach again someday," he declared with a victorious smile, and nodded toward the howler guards as more soldiers arrived, guns at the ready. One of the soldiers stepped forward and in a blur of motion fastened a manacle around Tenzin's wrist. Then he bent, roughly grabbed Lokesh's arm, and fastened the other end of the manacle to the old Tibetan.

"We need you, Rinpoche," one of the monks said with a sob, then, with an impatient gesture by Tuan, the soldiers jerked Lokesh to his feet, cutting off his mantra.

Shan watched, paralyzed with confusion, as Lokesh and the abbot of Sangchi were led down the path toward the oil camp.

Shan had learned from the lamas how to confront the lies that had once ruled his life, and how to abandon both the lies and the comfort they had given him. The lie that for twenty years as an investigator in Beijing he had made a difference. The lie that he and his wife, or at least he and his son, would someday be reconciled and reunited. And the lie that his release from the gulag meant he could live the rest of his life in freedom. He had come to accept that he would be returned to a hard labor camp eventually. For Shan, in the life he had chosen it was as inevitable as death, and perhaps above all else, the Tibetans had taught him not only to stop fearing, but to embrace the inevitable.

Yet somehow he always clung to the illusion that Lokesh could not be touched, that thirty years of his life had been enough to give to Beijing. It was an illusion that fed Shan's twisted view of the world, the view that said everything else was worth it, all the suffering could be endured, because a few wise, joyful creatures like Lokesh survived and walked the remote corners of Tibet.

But Lokesh would not survive. He had been taken by the soldiers and howlers, who had been told that the abbot of Sangchi was in the hands of purbas. The two would be kept together, for that was the way their handlers would prefer it. They would use Lokesh, make him suffer to extract whatever it was they wanted from Tenzin. With only one prisoner to interrogate they would eventually resort to chemicals, as they had with Shan in his early days of capture. But chemicals gave unpredictable results, and though few Tibetans would give information under torture, they would often surrender it when a companion was tortured because of them.

He let himself drift down with the crowd that had assembled around the new prisoners as they were conveyed into the camp. No one questioned him. No one came to put manacles on him. Tuan did not even seem to have noticed Shan. The excitement over the discovery of the famous abbot of Sangchi seemed to distract everyone.

He had been so blind. Gendun had known, and Shopo. Someone had died, Gendun had said. He had meant the abbot had somehow died, and Tenzin was trying to find a new life. He recalled Tenzin's first words to him, that day overlooking the red river. It was possible to start a new incarnation in the same body, because Shan had done so. Images flashed through Shan's mind: of Tenzin's anguish over Drakte's death, of the bitter way he had heaved a rock into the lake when Shan had suggested a pebble might capture his guilt, of the days and weeks he had watched the tall Tibetan carry dung. Shan had suspected Tenzin was the infamous Tiger, trying to reform after a life of violence. But some other dark weight had hung around the soul of the abbot of Sangchi, and he had decided to start again. And now they were dragging him back in chains, back to the particular prison he had fled.

As the soldiers led their prisoners past the army tents a loud argument broke out. A beefy soldier whom Shan remembered as Lin's sergeant shouted that the prisoners belonged to the 54th Mountain Combat Brigade. But the howlers kept pushing the two men toward one of the white utility vehicles. Tuan hovered close to Tenzin and stood with four of his men behind him as the sergeant railed, then one of the men in white shirts stepped to the soldier's side, spoke quietly, and handed the man a business card. As Shan stepped closer, trying to hear, a hand closed around his shoulder.

"You must have a death wish," Winslow growled, and pulled Shan away. "Jenkins told me what he knows. Mostly it's that you are number one on the list for the 54th Combat Brigade. They have your name. They think you may be a criminal escapee, that you kidnapped Lin. They're sending more troops in. Looking for Lin, looking for you."