Beautiful Ghosts (41 page)

“They all worked together for years,” Shan explained. “Lodi, Ming, Khan, McDowell, and someone else close to Dolan.” He turned to Corbett. “Dolan had to know the pieces Ming sold him were from the museum. He was a sophisticated collector, and Ming never would have risked it unless he was paid a fortune. Maybe there was a middleman, an art dealer somewhere, but Dolan knew he wasn’t buying reproductions. They were partners in crime against the Chinese people. But then, because Ming was in trouble, Ming urgently had to have the art back in Beijing and Dolan decided to extract a huge price for helping him. So this time there were two sides, two teams. Ming directed Lodi and Punji in taking the artifacts from Seattle, Dolan or his agent had Khan and Lu at work in Beijing, to steal what was to be Ming’s payment for the return of the artifacts.”

“Dolan wanted the fresco?” Corbett asked. “No way.”

Shan did not reply, but looked at McDowell’s back. “Everything had to be balanced, coordinated. It was why the crimes were committed at the same hour, because Ming and Dolan had grown suspicious of each other.”

“Dolan,” Corbett repeated with a chill in his voice. “He would never get his hands dirty. But he has an art dealer in Seattle.” The American fell into deep thought. “None of that makes Ming her enemy,” he said after a moment.

“That came later, more recently,” Shan offered, still watching McDowell, “when Ming started arresting old Tibetans and raiding personal altars. I believe it when she says she wants them all gone, wants the strangers out of Lhadrung.”

Punji turned back toward Shan and offered him a grateful nod. “Ming’s arrogance will keep him from seeing the truth for a while. If we hadn’t planted that tomb last night he would be here right now. He’s so obsessed. He would bring soldiers, have them shoot anyone who gets in his way. He is feeling invincible.”

“You’re in his way,” Shan observed.

“But I know him. I know them all. Don’t you see that I am the only one who can do this, who can save Zhoka from them, with no one getting hurt.” She returned Shan’s steady gaze, her eyes so hopeful now he wanted to believe her. “You said something about showing us the next level.”

“Enlightenment is the goal of the temple,” Lokesh said. “You must approach the temple as a pilgrim.”

Punji winced. “So enlighten us on how to get through the labyrinth.”

“I think,” Lokesh said slowly, “that there is no labyrinth.”

The British woman threw her hands up in frustration and aimed her light toward the chapels they had not yet explored.

“There is no maze for those who see through appearances,” Shan ventured, stepping closer to his old friend. Punji turned back to face them.

“In the entry there were two writings,” Lokesh explained. “The first said the greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances. The second was another old scripture. The only thing that is ours we look for elsewhere.”

“You think the entrance to the next level is right there,” Shan said.

“I didn’t then,” the old Tibetan said, stroking his grizzled jaw. “But now I think at least the answer to the riddle is there.”

McDowell turned, shining the light behind them now. “Go,” she said.

Moments later they reached the chapel where Khan was guarding the others. Ko squatted close to the big Mongolian, speaking to him in a low, casual voice.

McDowell quietly spoke to Khan, smiled at Ko, then ordered Lu to stay with Khan and the rest of the group, to hold Dawa, Liya, and Ko as hostage so the others would not run while they unlocked the secret of the maze.

“Why should we help you solve the puzzle?” Corbett demanded as they arrived at the entry chamber. “Because of you that girl was killed.”

“I will do whatever it takes to show you Lodi and I killed no one,” the British woman said. “But right now there’s something more urgent. You get me upstairs to the record chambers that must be up there and let us get out of Zhoka. You’re the genius art sleuth—help me figure out where the amban took the torn thangka. Then we’ll talk about Seattle.”

Yao glared at her. “I don’t make deals with criminals.”

Punji gave another of her exaggerated winces. “I’ve commited no crimes on Chinese territory.”

“Foreigners are here at the government’s discretion. We can deport you merely for associating with criminals. Permanently close the door.”

“Deport a British aid worker? Imagine the diplomatic tempest that will create.”

“No one is to get hurt,” Shan said. “When we finish we go our separate ways.”

“Except for the one called Lu,” Yao interjected. “We take him with us, back to Lhadrung.”

There was worry in McDowell’s eyes as she gazed at Yao. “You don’t know that one. Be careful what you wish for.”

“He was the one who took the emperor’s painting,” Yao declared. “The gear we found, the gloves, the tools, they were too small for that Khan. Lu must be the plaster man. He stole the fresco here, he stole the Qian Long fresco in Beijing. I want him. Cooperate now if you ever want to leave China.”

“A moment ago you were going to ship me out. Now you won’t let me leave. Make up your mind.”

“Sign a statement, tell us what you know. Enough for Lu to expect hard labor for twenty or thirty years. That will be enough for me to obtain what else I need.”

“Lodi’s dead,” Shan reminded her. “It’s never going to be the same.”

“I don’t betray people. He’s just doing a job. Why should I ruin his life?”

“So we can get Ming. He betrayed the trust of the Chinese people.”

“If you don’t help us you will have betrayed all the people of Bumpari,” Yao added with an apologetic glance at Shan. “Your family.”

“What do you mean?”

“If we have no way to link Ming to the stolen fresco, then we will have to try to stop him with evidence of the forgeries from the village,” Yao said. “We have Lodi’s accounts.”

Punji clenched her jaw. “All the more reason not to cooperate.”

“Make a deal,” Shan urged, “Yao can promise to keep Bumpari out of this.”

“I never said—” Yao sputtered.

Shan cut him off with a raised hand. “If everyone compromises a little Bumpari can be protected. It would be what Lodi would want. What Brother Bertram would want. What the lamas would want. That is my price for helping.” He looked at Yao. “Every investigation of a man like Ming ends in compromise,” he said, challenge in his voice.

Yao frowned but said nothing.

Punji bit her lip and stared at the image of the saint, and slowly nodded. “We still have to find the old records. And you’ll never get out of here safely without me.”

She returned their lights to them, and they began examining every inch of the walls, studying the smaller images in the murals, reading the painted text, studying the patterns in the colors. Corbett pointed to the top of the wall, which was bordered in small renderings of sacred symbols on colored backgrounds.

“White, blue, yellow, green, red, black,” the American said, pointing to each in turn. “Then it starts again.”

Lokesh shrugged. “The seed syllables,” he said, as if he thought everyone understood.

“Seed sounds have colors associated with them,” Shan explained. “White is
om,
blue
ma,
yellow
ni,
green
pad,
red
me,
black
hum.
”

“Om mani padme hum,” McDowell said. “The mani mantra. The faithful must keep invoking the Compassionate Buddha to find the true path.”

Corbett stepped to the wall, looking at the patterns of color in the murals. He pointed to the squares surrounding the image of Atisha. “There is only one white, and one blue,” he said, pointing to a square by the saint’s shoulder and another near his lowered right hand. He turned to the next painting, pointing to the only yellow and green squares in the mosaic of small portraits, again in the same pattern as the first two, then to two red and black squares on the third wall. “Put a line through each and they point to the bottom right corner of each wall. He bent to show them that the bottom right corner of each was a brown square, part of a different color pattern along the bottom of each vivid wall.

The fourth wall had no pointers. “What was it you said,” the American asked Lokesh. “We must see through appearances. And the thing we seek elsewhere is always right there with us.” Corbett knelt in the corner and an instant later gave a small cry of discovery. “The other walls were telling us to look at the corner of the fourth wall,” he said, showing how the square was a hole, not black as it appeared at a quick glance—a dark hole disguised by the pattern. “Something goes inside. A handle.”

Shan looked at the mendicant staff that hung over the door.

Moments later Corbett inserted the long handle of a staff into the hole. He pushed it tight and lifted. Nothing happened.

“I thought I heard something,” Yao said. “A click, maybe a release of something.” He pushed the wall above the hole. Nothing. Corbett and Shan pushed together, shouldering it, Yao joining in. Still nothing.

“It could be another false lead,” Corbett said, then rested against the adjacent wall and gasped as he began slipping. The wall behind him was shifting, opening on a central pivot. As the wall stopped, Corbett fell into the darkness.

Shan quickly followed, aiming his light at the American, who lay on the floor of a wooden landing below a steep, eighteen-inch-wide stairway, leading up.

“Christ they were good,” Corbett said, as he stood and aimed his own light at the back of the moving wall. It was constructed of heavy wood, joined so tightly and painted so cleverly that from the outside it looked like another stone wall.

As they climbed to the third level they reached a chamber unlike any of those below. Punji groaned as she topped the stairs, Lokesh gave a cry of delight.

The walls were lined with the heads of demons. Not those of the paintings below, but three-dimensional heads, the intricate, horrible masks of Tibetan ritual dancing, the heads that according to tradition could be inhabited by the demons themselves when the right words were spoken.

They stood for a moment, in the center of the room, their moving hand lights giving motion to the wrathful faces.

Shan’s light settled on a piece of paper framed in wood, hanging by one of the chamber’s two doors. It was not Tibetan, not part of the rituals, but a greeting of sorts.

As he lifted the dusty frame from the wall and handed it to McDowell, Shan heard her breath catch. “Dear Uncle Bertram.” She smiled and quietly read the text out loud:

How you made it this far I am curious

Since the chapels make pilgrims so furious

Was it our monkish crew

Or the deities who

Told you the maze was just spurious?

The door from the mask chamber led into a curving tunnel, matching that of the bottom floor, though with a smaller, tighter radius. The outer wall of the tunnel was broken at regular intervals by doorways leading to a series of chapels, each separated from the next by a meditation cell. They walked quickly, not pausing to study the images of the chapels. The inner wall was plastered, as intricately painted as the chapel walls, but with a simple wooden door every thirty feet, each constructed of heavy planks and held shut with an iron latch, each with a segment of rainbow painted between the top of the doorframe and the ceiling. They passed a painting of a deity on a lion throne, the wall behind painted yellow. It was the symbolic southern gate. Shan paused at the wooden door opposite the yellow wall and opened it.

It was an apartment, a living quarters for one of the gompa’s senior lamas—a spare, simple chamber, with a single thangka on the wall opposite the door, a low platform bed against the right wall, a wooden trunk against the left wall, and a simple altar under the thangka, all constructed of fragrant wood. The bed had a pallet and a single felt blanket, crumpled, pushed against the wall. As Corbett opened the trunk, Shan looked over his shoulder, seeing that it was divided with a slender plank. On one side there were two robes, two grey underrobes, sticks of incense, and several jars of herbs. On the other were four peche, the manuscript leaves neatly tied between elegantly carved end-boards. As Shan ran his finger over the delicate birds carved into the topmost end-board, he noticed Punji staring toward the center of the room. He followed her gaze to see Lokesh, gazing with sudden anguish toward the bed. Under it was a pair of worn sandals.

“What’s wrong?” Corbett asked as he noticed the old Tibetan. Then he muttered a low curse and stepped silently to Lokesh’s side.

“He ran out, sprang up from his bed,” Punji said in a pained voice.

The blanket, left in disarray in the otherwise pristine room, and the sandals forgotten under the bed, spoke eloquently of the day forty years before. “They came at dawn,” Shan whispered.

The blanket had not been touched, left where the lama had cast it off as the alarm was sounded, perhaps as the first bombs fell, as he sprang out the door without his sandals.

They silently stepped out of the room and ventured behind the next wooden door. The chamber appeared nearly identical to the first, except that its blanket was neatly folded on the bed. But an easel rested on the floor by a cushion and a wooden tray with paints and brushes. The piece of stretched cotton on the easel held the shapes of a complex thangka outlined in charcoal. In one corner the artist had started applying pigment.

The next chamber held another blanket thrown off in haste, and a clay jar upturned by the door. Suddenly Shan realized Lokesh was no longer with them. They retraced their steps and found him in a nearby chapel, staring at the murals, his lamp close to the wall.

“They aren’t the same as the others,” Lokesh observed, as Shan stepped to his side.

Shan’s lamp, quickly followed by the others, rose to illuminate the walls. The colors and the patina of age in the panels were like those of the other chapels. But instead of being surrounded by smaller images of the reincarnate lineage or panels of sacred emblems there were rocks and trees and clouds in the background. Mountains were behind the saint, with small birds flying over an open landscape.