Beautiful Ghosts (31 page)

“I’ve seen everything you’ve done,” a stern voice cracked. It hit him like a blade between his shoulders. Shan stared into his own hands a moment, then slowly looked up at Yao, who leaned against the nearest tree. “Destroying the tape recorded by Ming as evidence. Deliberately spilling those old prayers today so Tibetans could recover them. Ming would be furious.” Yao looked at the earth covering the tape with a strange mixture of amusement and anger on his countenance. “I begin to understand the kind of mistakes you made in your career, Inspector General Shan.”

The last words caused Shan’s head to snap back toward Yao. “I read your file again this afternoon, all of it this time. Model worker in your Ministry. Nominated for party membership but you declined. Never in my life have I heard of someone declining such an honor. You may as well have put a gun to your own head.”

“It didn’t feel like an honor at the time,” Shan said. “I was investigating a senior party official for corruption. He arranged for the nomination while I was writing my report.”

Something like a dry laugh escaped Yao’s lips. “Did you get your man?”

“The Ministry of Justice exercised its discretion not to prosecute.”

“And so you start the process all over,” Yao said with a shrug, taking a step toward Shan. “You must understand that what Ming is doing is correct.” He pushed his boot into the loose soil and dug in, plowing back the dirt to expose the tape. “The artifacts belong to the state. The mass interrogation is also a highly effective technique for dealing with indigenous populations.”

He picked up the shattered, dirt-encrusted tape, frowned at Shan, then began using it like a shovel, digging the hole wider and deeper. He quickly finished, stood, pulled the other three tapes from his jacket, and tossed them into the hole with the first tape, kicking the soil on top of them. “But he is so overzealous. I find it distasteful. Old people crying on a video, with a soldier hovering over them. I will not have such evidence in my trials.” His face hardened as he looked back up at Shan. “Try something like that again, and I’ll have you back behind wire, buried so deep in the system no one will ever find you.” He pounded the earth over the tapes with his boot. “What I just did was an exercise of my official discretion. What you did was a crime against the state.”

Ming was holding court again in the hall when Shan and Yao returned to the compound. They stood at the entrance to the chamber a moment, listening to the director explain why one of the targeted caves was thought to be on a high, square mountain facing west. An army officer with a wooden pointer indicated possible locations on a topographical map now pinned to the wall.

Shan took a step inside the door, staring at the map, but Yao pulled him away. Shan followed him silently through a smaller door at the end of the entry hall, into a long corridor with half a dozen doors. They passed an unoccupied office with a desk strewn with paper. Through a second door, closed, came the sound and smells of a kitchen. Three more doors held numbers like hotel rooms. Inside one of the rooms a Chinese matron was making a bed. Yao opened the last door and gestured Shan inside as he studied the corridor behind them, then closed the door and switched on a brilliant overhead light.

The high-ceilinged room had the atmosphere of a small chapel. The wall opposite the door was covered with cedar planks, lustrous with the patina of age. Planks covered the other walls as well, but they had been painted with yellow enamel. A red flag, its upper left field consisting of a large yellow star with four smaller stars arrayed in an arc beside it, hung on one wall, flanked by portraits of past party dignitaries. A ten-foot-long table topped with plastic laminate filled most of the chamber. Yao rushed to the far end of the table, where a laptop computer sat, and turned it on, impatiently tapping the frame of the machine as the screen lit. After a moment he inserted one of the discs from Liya. The logo of the Museum of Antiquities appeared, then a familiar title, another pilgrim’s guide.

They quickly examined the other discs, including the two Yao had given Shan. Three were more pilgrim’s guides, and a file showing the results of a computer search. Someone had looked for patterns in references, for the location of certain repeating Tibetan place names: Dom Puk, Zetrul Puk, Kuden Puk, Woser Puk. Bear Cave, Miracle Cave, Lama Throne Cave, Cave of Light. As Shan would have expected, the search showed the names to be used repeatedly, each in several locations across old Tibet. But Ming had now identified local sites bearing the names. The fourth was a log of transactions. Yao stared at a small box of discs behind the computer, bearing a label with Ming’s name on it. He glanced at the door then opened the box and inserted the first of the discs.

A new legend appeared.
“Nei Lou,”
it said in large figures, over a Chinese flag. State secret. Project Amban, the next screen said, over a short biography of Prince Kwan Li. The prince had been a nephew of the emperor, and a fierce general renowned for several victories in the western lands where the empire kept trying to subdue the Moslems. He had been appointed
amban,
imperial ambassador to Tibet, in recognition of his achievements on the battlefield. Next came a series of meeting records, all dated several years earlier.

The task group and its name had the air of a high-level government project. Shan pointed to the list of task group members at the bottom of the memorandum. They were all Chinese names, and many had their official affiliations listed. A senior official from the Public Security Bureau, a ranking officer of the Party secretariat, the Bureau of Religious Affairs, the Minister of Culture, the head of the People’s National Library, the Chief Curator of the Forbidden City Museum. A professor of history from Beijing University.

“They were discussing a new public information campaign drawn from historical experience,” Yao said as he scanned the next screen, and glanced at Shan. It was one of the peculiar holdovers from the era of Mao, the occasional announcement of a new hero, often a dead hero, as a way of underscoring correct socialist thought. “To honor the heroic nephew of a revered emperor. It says the amban was to return to the capital for the festivals declared in honor of the long reign of the Qian Long emperor and the enthronement of the emperor’s successor. But he was lost en route from Tibet. The available histories did not agree on his fate. The committee established that he had stopped to settle a war between two small tribes that had taken a terrible toll on the local peasants and was killed, making the ultimate sacrifice in the service of the downtrodden.”

Yao scrolled through several pages in silence, then looked up and shrugged. It seemed nothing more than a record of Beijing’s process for coronation of a new people’s saint. Such heroes were discovered once or twice a year. A book or two would be written, party officials were to include references in speeches, a statue of the new hero might be commissioned, passages written to be inserted in school curricula. “It’s nothing,” Yao said. “Eventually they dropped the amban in favor of a new hero, better suited to a new political theme.”

“Except that even though he was not on the task group Ming suddenly decided to assemble all the files, even the secret files. Two months ago.” Shan pointed to a date at the bottom of the file. “Three days after the robbery.”

Yao stared at the screen in silence. “There’s no sense in it. Maybe he does buy forgeries from Lodi, and sell the originals to people like Dolan. It’s got no connection to the amban.”

“The connection,” Shan said, “is the Qian Long emperor.”

The next disc did not display text in a computer font but the image of an old document that had been scanned, a letter on what looked like a rolled parchment elegant Chinese ideograms. Yao began to read out loud.

“Son of heaven,” he began, “esteemed of all peoples.” Yao muttered a syllable of frustration as he stumbled over the old ideograms, then scrolled down. At the bottom of the page was a museum inventory number. It was a document from Ming’s archives in Beijing. Another letter followed, and another with the same flowery salutation. Ten letters in all, each with the bright smear of vermilion that was the sign of a wax seal.

The next four documents held more letters, numbering forty in all, all in the same elegant script, all with the same greeting, all with museum inventory numbers. Each of the letters had been processed into a computer font on the next four discs. They seemed to follow a similar format, opening with the same stiff formal language, offering news of troop movements, rumors about foreign agents, harvests, caravans, and weather. Most closed with an expression of affection, some with poetry, some with small ink sketches: A line of ceremonial hats used in Buddhist ritual. A yak in profile. The Potala Palace in Lhasa. The front line of the Himalayas, viewed from the north. An old wrinkled hand, holding a string of prayer beads. They were primitive drawings, but done with a simple grace.

Suddenly Yao gave a small exhalation of surprise. Shan stepped to his side and followed his finger to a legend where the museum registration number had appeared on the other letters. This one had a more complete explanation. Imperial Ching Collection, it said, personal correspondence of the Qian Long emperor. Ming had been secretly examining letters sent by the nephew of the Qian Long to his uncle the emperor in Beijing, over two hundred years earlier.

“We have to read the letters,” Shan insisted. “They may hold the answer, the missing link.”

“There’s no time,” Yao protested. His fingers tapped a single key, calling up more letters, until he reached the last, scanned onto the disc only three weeks before. Yao muttered a low curse. The last document, but only the last, was encrypted. They could not read it.

Shan darted to the cabinet at the rear of the room, quickly searching its drawers. From the third drawer he extracted a disc, lying loose among pencils and paper clips, extracted the disc in the computer, putting it in his pocket and placing the new disc into Ming’s case.

Yao’s notepad appeared in his hand. As the inspector began writing, Shan went to a second computer, connected a phone line, and began typing. In less than a minute he was staring uneasily at a new screen, displaying text under a red, white, and blue emblem.

“What have you done!” Yao gasped behind him.

“Corbett gave me his access code. He wanted me to send some questions to his team.” Bold letters appeared on the screen: The Federal Bureau of Investigation. He was inside the internal network of the agency.

“About what?” Yao asked in a sharp voice.

“About Lodi. About Dolan.”

“It’s a crime for you to do so.”

“Not a Chinese crime.”

“He could be fired.”

“Which means he considered the questions important.” Shan entered another code and the mail account of Corbett appeared.

“What questions?” Yao demanded.

Shan did not need to look at the list the American had given him. He had it memorized. He entered the name Bailey, as Dolan had instructed, and began typing: When had Dolan visited China during the past ten years? What is Dolan’s relationship to Director Ming of the Museum of Antiquities and to William Lodi? Where did Dolan go on an expedition with Ming in China? Was there a business connection between Dolan and Elizabeth McDowell, citizen of the United Kingdom?

“Dolan was the victim of the crime.” Yao observed.

Shan paused to study Yao. “Dolan,” he said slowly, “is a friend of Ming’s and McDowell’s.” He showed Yao the photographs he had found in Lodi’s belongings.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Because by telling you I compromise you.”

“Ridiculous. I work for the Council of Ministers.”

“What if Dolan had discovered Ming and Lodi arranged the theft of his collection? What if he told the Council to send you to Lhadrung, to put pressure on Ming and Lodi?”

“Impossible.”

“Dolan is an important benefactor to Chinese cultural activities. And a significant foreign investor.”

Yao’s glare softened, and he looked back at Ming’s box of discs.

Shan continued typing—a new set of questions, not on Corbett’s list: Inquire whether Elizabeth McDowell traveled on same flights as William Lodi from Seattle. Was Lodi’s flight from Beijing to Lhasa reserved in advance? Do a media search and try to obtain published photographs of Dolan’s Tibetan art collection. Find out purpose of Ming’s museum expeditions to Inner Mongolia.

Suddenly he became aware of Yao looking over his shoulder again. “Confirm what contributions Dolan has made to Ming’s museum in Beijing,” Yao added in a solemn voice. “Provide a list of any calls between Dolan and Beijing during the past six months. Send passport records of—”

Yao was cut off by the abrupt opening of the door. Director Ming was suddenly staring at them. “We missed you,” Ming said. “You would have learned something about your thieves.”

Shan finished typing, hit the send button, and shut down the computer.

“I am sorry, Comrade Director,” Yao said impassively. “It sounded like a history lesson.”

Ming circled the table, pausing in front of the now blank computer screen. “I need you on the teams going into the mountains tomorrow, Inspector. The army has developed search quadrants.”

“I came to find thieves,” Yao declared.

“Exactly. The thief was taking the stolen art into the mountains and was killed by Tibetan reactionaries who took the art treasures to one of the old hidden shrines.”

“You revised your theory,” Yao pointed out.

“We must adapt to circumstances.”

“It could be dangerous to send your—” Yao searched for a word—“scholars into the mountains. It would be safer to wait.”

Ming silently returned Yao’s stare for a long moment, then shrugged and smiled. “We can wait no longer. It is urgent now. We have discovered there is a long tradition in Lhadrung of stealing art, of killing people for their art.” He stepped toward the door, paused and turned. “It’s one of the reasons the army is assisting. You have been assigned to a team. Both of you.” He grew silent and stepped to the door, turning just before he disappeared. “Be prepared for great things,” he said.