Beautiful Ghosts (40 page)

“Right,” Ko said slowly.

Shan heard the rustle of fabric, a metallic sound, of small objects clinking together. After a moment he sensed Ko rising, and felt his hand touch Shan’s arm. Shan turned and they stood back to back.

“They’re hard places, the coal mines,” Shan observed after watching the darkness for another minute.

“Think of your worst hell,” Ko said in a whisper, “times ten. They work you for twelve hours a day, every day, all year. In the cold, the rain, the snow, the heat, it doesn’t matter. Barely warm rice gruel twice a day, and you pray you find an insect or a worm to eat with it. First day I was there I saw a man catch a bird and bite its head off and chew it, then stuff the whole body in his mouth, feathers and all. After a month I was looking for birds. Every night you drop with exhaustion, but the fucking lice keep waking you, chewing on your skin.”

Something inside Shan prayed for Ko to stop speaking. He didn’t want to hear any more. He was powerless to help his son, knew his son would have to go back to the hell he described.

“They never issue gloves,” Ko continued. A distant fascination had entered his voice. “And almost no tools. Old hammers and dull chisels. My first week, I saw a man with little white caps on his fingers and asked what they were. He laughed and said they were the reward for prisoners who survived ten years. It was only later, when I saw more men that way, that I understood that it was the bones of his fingers. The skin on the tips wears away. After ten years the flesh starts shriveling and the bones show like little white knobs. Fuck me,” he added, his distant voice cracking for a moment. “It’s true.”

Shan found himself trembling. He knew it was Ko, the nineteen-year-old convict speaking, but he heard the words in the voice of Ko as an eight-year-old boy.

They moved in silence.

“In one of those rooms I felt someone,” Ko said suddenly. “I touched his shoulder. A ghost I think. He said if I would sit with him I could learn to understand. I ran and hit my head again. I imagined it. He couldn’t have been real.”

Shan stopped, fighting the temptation to call out Gendun’s name.

“I see light!” Ko exclaimed.

Shan turned to see a glimmer in the distance. As they approached more light could be seen, then the moving beams of hand lamps, and he heard familiar voices speaking in urgent whispers. Lokesh and Liya were at another wall of text as Shan and Ko reached them, struggling with the translation.

Yao frowned at Ko, and extended a water bottle to Shan. As Ko stepped in front of him to grab the bottle Shan saw that his pants pockets had been emptied of the artifacts he had taken, but his jacket pockets were now full. His son had not discarded the artifacts, only moved them.

Shan noted the confused expressions shared by Liya and Lokesh. They seemed to be understanding the words but not the text. It was not one of the old teachings. Along the top were painted small white birds that looked like doves, along the sides flowers that looked like roses with heavy thorns.

“It’s not as old as some of the others,” Corbett said, bending to examine the paint. “Only a century or so.”

“To all things exists a season,” Lokesh said slowly, pointing to the first line. “And an hour for every intention under the gods’ palace.”

Shan heard Corbett’s breath catch, and the American bent to the final words, near the floor, then stood. “To everything there is a season,” Corbett recited in English, “and a time to every purpose under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die.”

Lokesh, nodding his head, looked at the American in confusion.

Corbett pointed. “At the bottom, the source is given, in English. Ecclesiastes. The Christian Bible. A time to plant,” he continued with the verse, “and a time to pluck up what is planted.”

As they stared in mute astonishment a woman’s voice rose from the shadows. “Bloody wonderful, isn’t it? I wish I could have known the old major. His life was a miracle, don’t you think?”

Elizabeth McDowell stepped into the chamber. Corbett frowned, and patted his pockets as if looking for a weapon. Liya grabbed Dawa and pulled the girl behind her. McDowell looked at the Tibetan woman with a hurt expression, shrugged, then offered Shan a small apologetic nod.

“All these years,” she said with a vague gesture into the labyrinth, “we never had a clue about the amban. There’s a key to a fortune somewhere in these walls. If Lodi and I had known,” she said, and shrugged again, “we never would have had to work so hard.”

“Lodi wouldn’t let you do this,” Liya said. “Not the earth temple. He would protect it.”

“Not the temple, cousin. The amban’s records. Lodi wanted to know about the amban as much as the rest of us. The lost treasure belonged to the emperor. It’s not stealing from Tibetans.”

“You can’t do it,” Liya protested. “They’ll hurt the temple.”

“You misunderstand, Liya. We want to learn where in the north we can find the amban’s treasure, that’s all. Kwan Li and the emperor liked a good mystery. All these old gompas keep detailed records. I assumed they were destroyed until I heard about the underground temple. Help me find the records, help me solve the mystery, and no one has to damage the temple.”

“Someone already stole a fresco here,” Shan pointed out. “Damaged others.”

“I didn’t know, you have to believe that,” the British woman said in a strangely plaintive voice. “Lodi didn’t know. People get overzealous. Good professionals always keep their skills honed,” she said with a glance to the shadows. “It won’t happen again. Look, let Ming get famous, let him get rich. I’ll make sure Bumpari gets part of it. You’ll never have to worry about food or medicine again. I want to get them away from here as much as you do. I can do it. Just trust me.”

“You’ll never get away, McDowell,” Corbett said between clenched teeth.

“Punji. All my friends call me Punji,” the British woman said in an oddly gentle, almost vulnerable tone. “Somehow you seem like an old friend, Agent Corbett, following my tracks, trying to get close to me.”

“I didn’t know you were one of them,” Corbett growled.

“Not one of them,” Punji said with a melancholy glance toward Shan and Liya. “Just call us an alliance of people with certain mutual interests.” She seemed to force a grin as she studied Corbett and Yao. “But just so we have no more unpleasant misunderstandings, we’ll have to check things.”

Liya moaned as two men appeared out of the shadows, the huge Mongolian and the gaunt Han whose faces Shan had seen in the photos with Ming and Dolan. “This is Mr. Khan and Mr. Lu.”

Liya visibly shuddered, then grabbed Dawa and stepped between Shan and Corbett. Shan saw the long scratches down Khan’s cheek, where Liya had raked her nails. Khan fixed her with an eager, hungry stare.

“Godkillers!” Liya spat at the two men. Lu laughed, then the two men began searching each member of the party. They took the packs, stuffed inside them the radio, pocketknives, the compass, and all the lights.

“Even if you thought of running back,” McDowell said, “you’ll never find the path.” She opened a palm to show a handful of rice.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

Brother Bertram’s life was a miracle. The British woman’s unexpected words about her ancestor stayed with Shan as she escorted him, with Corbett and Lokesh, deeper into the maze of chapels while Khan guarded the others. The woman was an enigma, an art thief and humanitarian, partner of Director Ming, cousin of the Bumpari clan, organizer of relief for Tibetan children, and, according to Corbett, a murderer.

“I can give you a deal,” Corbett said in English to McDowell’s back as they walked. “Maybe it was Lodi’s idea, maybe you were just duped. If I ask for leniency a judge will listen.”

“Deal?” she asked with a laugh. “For what?”

“For the prosecution that will take place in Seattle.”

“Seattle? Last I checked you were my prisoner in a labyrinth in a cave on the opposite side of the planet. And also—” she turned and pretended to struggle to recall something. “Oh yes,” she said with a finger on her chin, “you have no evidence. No stolen art. No proof of who was at the scene. Nothing. Like the lamas say, your thieves were made of thin air.”

“We can place you and Lodi in Seattle, and know you left the next day, flew back to Tibet, to transfer what you stole from Dolan to Director Ming.”

“Why would we do that?”

“Because Ming stole it from the government of China. Because he had to get it back before the audit. Give me Ming and you can walk. If I find the art without you there will be no more room to negotiate,” Corbett warned.

“But you’ll never find it. You know the routine. The collection gets broken up, sent to dealers in Europe. Impossible to trace.” She shook her head and gazed at the American, seeming to notice his Tibetan clothes for the first time. It seemed to soften her somehow. “What is wrong with you?” she sighed. “You’re obsessing. Wealth gets redistributed. No one gets hurt. Dolan gets a check from his insurance company.”

“What about the girl who died?”

The smile faded from Punji’s face. “What girl? No one died.”

“The nanny. Abigail Morgan. Her body was found in the bay five days later.”

The British woman searched Corbett’s eyes for a moment. “Not a chance. No one died.”

Corbett looked at Lu, who walked in front of them. “He doesn’t speak English,” McDowell said, and grabbed a handful of Corbett’s shirt to force his gaze back to her. “Damn you, what girl?”

“She disappeared that night. She went back to the house for something and must have seen something. She was killed, thrown off a bridge.”

“Impossible.” McDowell said in a slow whisper, then looked at the wall for a long moment, at an image of a lama with his novices. “You have no evidence. Of anything. I am telling you nothing. But theoretically, if two people flew in for a job like that, they would be the kind of people interested only in the art. Just business. Theoretically,” she said, fixing Corbett with a somber look, “the alarm sensors were cut in three places, at the video feed, the house alarm box, and at the remote police alarm mounted on the fence. Theoretically, the entire Tibetan collection was taken, but only the Tibetan collection. Let’s say the backdoor lock cylinder was popped out, and the thieves wore latex gloves, leaving no fingerprints.” It was practically a confession. But she was telling him to make Corbett believe her, Shan realized, to make him understand she and Lodi were not murderers.

“Theoretically, there was a third person who wasn’t always with you,” Shan ventured.

“No way.” McDowell kept studying Corbett as she spoke. “You don’t really know she was killed there.” It was a statement, not a question. “There’s no official inquiry into a killing. If there was, the press would have gone into a frenzy over a nanny killed at the Dolan estate.”

Corbett frowned but said nothing. Shan stared at him, suddenly perplexed. The FBI agent had told him the death was why he had come to Tibet. He recalled his first conversation with Corbett. The American had stated her death as a fact connected to the robbery. But he had told Shan of the strange, accidental way he had been involved in the discovery and recovery of her body, had admitted to Shan that finding her had not been part of his robbery investigation. There had been a message, on the FBI computer.
The boss found out you opened papers on the babysitter, ordered it closed.
Shan had thought it was about another matter. He had not understood the word babysitter. It must mean the nanny, the college student who died. Corbett had been ordered to stop investigating the death of the young woman. Yet here he was, in the earth temple, risking his career, perhaps his life, to find an answer.

Punji McDowell looked away, took a step further into the maze. “Why did you bring the little girl?” she asked abruptly, staring into the darkness. The anger in her voice was gone, replaced with something like worry.

“Dawa was lost,” Shan said. “She came to find her Tibetan family. To hear about the old ways. She is from these hills originally. Descended from the Bumpari clan.”

McDowell sighed and offered another small, melancholy smile.

“She came to teach us how to learn about the temple,” Lokesh said, as if correcting Shan, reminding Shan of the words Surya had spoken.

“The old ways are a bit obtuse,” the British woman said. “I thought gaining entry to the temple would be the hardest part.” She eyed Shan, and switched to English. “We’re looking for the same thing. Get me to the upper chambers, where the records must be, and I’ll let you go. All of you.”

Shan studied her. “First you must tell us something. Why you made that tomb Ming found.”

McDowell’s green eyes flashed. She returned Shan’s steady gaze for a moment, then slowly smiled. “I think I like Ming better as an enemy than a partner. It was quite entertaining.”

“You had to give up the robe from Fiona.”

“I was sorry. But she understood. Cousin Fiona and I have drunk tea together many times, for many years. I told her it was for Lodi. She sent a herder on horseback to Zhoka for the bones, with a prayer to protect him. I promised when it was over I would stay with her for a week and read all her books out loud.”

“What do you mean an enemy?” Yao asked, and studied McDowell intensely. “You mean a quarrel among thieves.”

“Another mistake. I’m not a thief,” she said in a voice grown suddenly fierce.

Yao frowned and threw up his hands. “You just told us you…” He paused and noticed how Shan and McDowell stared at each other.

“Do the FBI files show any other thefts ever committed by Lodi and Miss McDowell?” Shan asked Corbett without breaking from the woman’s gaze.

“None,” the American replied. “Not even a record of a parking ticket anywhere on the planet. What’s your point?”

“She wasn’t a thief,” Shan said, his mind racing to understand what McDowell was telling them, and not telling them. “She was a courier. Someone else was there, someone else disabled the security system. Lodi and Punji just carried the collection away.”

McDowell offered a thin smile then turned away and stepped closer to the nearest wall, acting as if suddenly interested in a painting of a green deity.