Beautiful Ghosts (55 page)

Dolan ignored him, kept staring at Lokesh. “You don’t think I understand things. Think I don’t have a conscience?” He took a step toward Khan. “I’ll show you conscience! You want justice for Punji’s killer?” With one swift movement he raised the pistol, pointed it at Khan’s head, and fired.

No one moved. Dolan’s face was like that of the wild-eyed demons on the ancient thangkas. “There! That’s what Chinese do to killers, right? A bullet in the head.” Khan slumped forward, his head on the table, a pool of blood spreading around it.

“Your deity is leaving you,” Lokesh said. He had not taken his eyes off the American. “You can catch it only by stopping now. You have to let go, you have to start over.”

Dolan seemed struck again by the old Tibetan’s words. He looked at the gun in his hands, then Khan. “I don’t even know how to use one of these things,” he said in a small confused voice. “It just went off. You saw, it just went off.”

“You’re mad, Dolan,” Corbett said. “Certifiable. You should be spending your money on doctors.” He took a step toward the shelves, where the rifle leaned.

Lokesh stepped to the dead man, placed a hand on his back as if to comfort him, then began untying his bindings. Shan stepped to his side to help. The small-caliber bullet had left a neat circle near the center of Khan’s forehead.

“That girl in Seattle,” Shan said. “It wasn’t you either, was it?”

Dolan waved the gun, settling its barrel on Corbett. He tilted the weapon upward as if pretending to shoot, then walked away, to stand in front of the portrait of the Qian Long emperor. “That was my car,” he said in an absent voice, speaking to the emperor. “I was just watching when she was knocked unconscious.”

“And you were just watching when you threw her over the side, when you dropped her bike off the second bridge?” Corbett asked. He glanced at the rifle, still leaning on the shelves.

“Little Miss Perfect,” Dolan said in a voice like a stretched wire. “I could have given her so much. But she said she wasn’t going to be one of my concubines. She scratched me when I tried. I would have fired her but she would have sued me, the bitch.”

A deep, sad sigh wracked Corbett. “She saw you that night, when you turned off the alarms and let Lodi and Punji in.”

Dolan still faced the Qian Long. “She didn’t think I knew about her secret way over the wall. She always avoided me. Shared secrets with my kids. So perfect she had to come back to turn off the damned kiln.” He slowly turned. “I want him to come home with me,” he said.

Shan took a step forward, not understanding, but sensing that Ko was about to lunge at Dolan.

“Look at their eyes. They were great men. They understood such things, the weight of power. Take him, too,” Dolan said with a motion toward the portrait of the emperor’s nephew. “Roll them up,” he ordered, gesturing with the gun toward Ko.

“I am not one of your slaves,” Ko shot back.

“Yes you are. And after we find the treasure I have a plan for you. I am going to take you into that maze and shoot you in both legs, then leave you in the dark. The army will take your friends away and you’ll die alone, after a few days.” Dolan’s smile seemed chiseled out of ice. “If it had been the emperor you just tried to kill you would have been condemned to the death by a thousand slices. How lucky for you.”

“They don’t know where the treasure is,” Ko snapped. “This is as far as you go.”

Dolan pulled the trigger again, then a second time. Ko jerked back, wincing, holding his hand. One of the bullets had gone through his hand. Blood began seeping through his fingers. But he stepped forward, closer, as if daring Dolan to shoot again.

“You know nothing about emperors,” Dolan hissed.

Yao pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it to Ko’s wound.

Shan stepped in front of the gun.

“I am going to kill him,” Dolan said in a voice like ice. “Try to stop me and I’ll just do it quicker, shoot him right now. You can decide, Shan, what do you want? Let me kill him slow in the dark, or quick in front of his father?”

When Ko looked into Shan’s eyes there was no pleading on his countenance, only defiance.

Shan turned his back on his son, stepping in front of him. “I will take you to the amban’s treasure,” Shan said.

The chamber grew silent as death again.

“Dammit no!” Ko spat.

“You will take me there, you will help me load it, and get it back to Lhadrung,” Dolan demanded, his empty eyes beginning to fill with a cruel, excited fire.

“I will.” The words came from his own tongue but the voice seemed far away to Shan.

“You don’t know the way!” Ko shouted to Shan’s back.

“I know it now. Mr. Dolan showed it to me.”

“I hate you!” Ko moaned.

Shan closed his eyes a moment, but did not turn, because of what he would see in his son’s eyes. “But only if you promise not to hurt the boy,” he said to Dolan.

“Get me the treasure and I will not hurt him.”

“You will let him go back to his prison. No new charges.”

“No new charges,” Dolan agreed with an cold, victorious grin. “But afterwards you will surrender yourself to that Colonel as the killer of Khan. You will sign a statement that you tied him up and shot him in cold blood in revenge for his killing Lodi and Punji.”

Shan lowered his eyes and nodded. He did not know how long he had stared at the floor, only became aware that everyone was gazing at him. He stepped toward the corridor. “Did you see the rays of light?” he asked. He could no longer look into Dolan’s face. “There are segments of rainbows over the doors on this level, only this level, pointing upward, making a circle of rainbow segments, the bases of many rainbows. It is said that when holy men die their bodies dissolve into light, that their essence ascends to the sky in a rainbow. To heaven. Above.”

“We already know there’s another level,” Dolan snapped.

“Over every door there is a segment,” Shan continued, “except one, the entrance to the abbot’s chamber next door. Because the abbot was the senior monk, the one to whom the rainbows led, who lived at the gate of heaven.” Everyone but Lokesh followed. The old Tibetan lingered by the body of Khan, now laid on the floor below the shelves. He was gently cleaning the man’s head, looking into his scalp, whispering the death rites. To the Tibetans one of the greatest things to be feared in death was a wound that might block the top of the head, where the soul exited.

“We go to the center of the universe,” Shan said to Lokesh.

Lokesh raised a hand as though to acknowledge Shan, but did not look away from the dead man.

Dolan took a step toward Lokesh and seemed about to bark an order, then hesitated as he stared at the dead man. For a moment his eyes filled with the wild confusion he had shown when coming out of the maze. “He’s gone, you fool. There’s nothing left,” Dolan said in an oddly plaintive tone.

“No,” Lokesh said. “In some, there is more to work with in death than in life,” he said in a pointed voice.

Dolan raised his pistol, but in a halfhearted, uncertain way, as if to argue with Lokesh.

Shan approached slowly, his eyes on the end of the pistol. When Shan touched the cold steel of the gun Dolan jerked, as if Shan had touched Dolan’s skin. “When a killer dies,” Shan said, “what’s left is in danger of never finding the beauty.”

For a moment Dolan searched Shan’s face, as if about to ask Shan to explain, but said nothing. He let Shan push the gun down and followed Shan out of the room.

Moments later Shan stood in the center of the next room, the abbot’s quarters, studying the chamber in silence. Khan and Lu had been at work. The walls had been stripped of their paintings. Four of the seven ritual bowls had been removed from the simple altar that was built into the wall, dropped onto the floor in front of it. Shan lifted one of the bowls, examining it before replacing it on the altar. “The bowls,” he said quietly, studying the wall. “Khan and Lu thought they might be valuable, I think, and set them down when they saw they were not made of precious metal. They are heavy, have the heft of solid gold, but they are not gold, they are lead. Those three,” he pointed to the bowls remaining on the altar, “still hold the remains of the traditional herbal offerings. The other four would have held water, which long ago evaporated.” He surveyed the confused faces of his companions. “I need your water bottles.”

Corbett and Yao looked at Dolan as they reached into their small packs and produced two bottles. The new Dolan who had come out of the labyrinth had become even more frightening than before. He sat on the bed, his eyes sometimes glazing over, holding his arms around his chest and swaying forward and backward. Shan saw the glance exchanged between Corbett and Yao and, alarmed that they might try to rush Dolan, touched Corbett and pointed to the empty bowls.

“Here you attain heaven by paying homage to the deity,” Shan explained.

“Fuck you,” Dolan said. He rose, leveling the pistol at Shan. “I pay homage to no one. You have no idea of my power.”

“Nothing like the power,” Shan said, “of an old Tibetan trying to help the soul of a Chinese killer.”

Dolan’s lip curled in a silent snarl.

“If you want to go up, to the center, you must place an offering on the altar,” Shan continued. “Each of you.”

Dolan’s countenance did not change but he did what Shan asked, filling a bowl with water.

As Ko set the fourth bowl on the altar a muffled thud could be heard, as if somewhere nearby blocks of wood had shifted, tapping each other.

“We tested many of the walls before,” Shan said, “But we had no time to check every surface, every section. When Dolan fired the shot that hit the shelves in the other room I thought it hit a book cover.” He held up the splinter he had retrieved. “But this is from the wall. The bullet hit the wall behind. The wall is made of wood, painted to look like stone.” He stepped to the wall by the abbot’s bed, in a place he judged opposite where the bullet had struck in the other chamber. The surface was painted with a protector demon reaching toward the sky. He studied it, then laid his hands over the outstretched hands of the demon and pressed. The wooden wall moved inward, revealing a small chamber like a closet. At its rear was a crude ladder stair, made out of rough hand-hewn timber. It was the kind of stair he had seen in impoverished temples, used to reach elevated shrines. The kind that might have been used hundreds of years before when Tibetan temples were first being built.

Dolan was suddenly reluctant to ascend. He said nothing when Shan began to climb, and stood silently as Corbett, Yao, and Ko followed to the top of the old ten-foot ladder, joining Shan in a short corridor lined with fragrant wood that led to a low doorway beside which was a shelf holding over a dozen bronze butter lamps. Before he realized what he was doing Shan extinguished the electric lamp in his hand, put it on the shelf, and lit a butter lamp. Without asking why the others did the same.

They hesitated, looking at each other, then Shan gestured for Ko to lead the way. As they walked down the corridor a noise like the rustle of wind grew louder, the air colder. The side walls fell away and Ko stopped and looked at his feet. The floor, too, had fallen away. He was standing on a single beam. The beam was gold, ornately worked with figures of deer, birds, and flowers. Tethered to the beam was a yak hair rope that extended in a graceful arc into the shadows beyond. Ko extended his lamp to the side. Black water rushed underneath the beam.

“The moat,” Shan said. “The symbolic ocean that surrounds Mount Meru at the center of the universe. After the oceans came golden mountains.”

As Ko ventured across the beam, Dolan appeared behind them, holding another of the butter lamps. It was the hollow, angry Dolan, still holding the gun. A hungry smile grew on his face as he saw the gold beam, the symbolic drawbridge.

Past the bridge, on pedestals carved from the living rock, were seven mythical mountains, gleaming, sculpted in gold, appearing to be modeled after the peaks of the Himalayas, the first over two feet high, the others descending until the seventh was less than ten inches. Dolan pushed at several of the mountains, tried to lift the smallest, as if assessing them for shipment.

Suddenly they were in a round chamber, no more than twenty feet in diameter, under a high central dome that seemed to have been painted black, like an endless sky. A band of silver encircled the dome just above their heads, worked with images of sacred emblems, with a section of a different material marking each of the cardinal directions: gold on the north, clear crystal in the east, sapphire in the south, rubies in the west, according to the Meru tradition. The chamber’s floor was surrounded by the rushing water, giving it the appearance of being suspended in a sea.

Four elegant curving altar tables were spread in a circle around the edge of the floor, with gaps like gates between them under the marks of the four directions, each altar nearly covered with renderings of deities in gold, silver, lapis, or precious jewels. As Shan walked along the richly laden altars the sound of rushing water grew stronger. When he reached the mark of the north he extended his lamp over the moat and discovered a treacherous churning of water, a violent whirlpool perhaps three feet in diameter, marking where the water drained. It was the head of the waterfall, he realized, the source of the water that swept into the chasm below Zhoka.

He turned to see the others entranced by the contents of the altar tables. Yao stood in front of the most elegant statue of the Historical Buddha Shan had even seen, a two-foot-high image cast in gold, with eyes subtly set in lapis, a face so real, so detailed, it seemed to be a life mask.

“The mandala machine,” Yao whispered, “just as the amban described.” He pushed a lever on a domed device of silver and gold, watching the top lift like the petals of a lotus as four concentric rings rose up in a minature of the Zhoka palace. “They are all here, as described in the amban’s letter.” Beside the mandala device were two richly colored thangkas unfurled nearly horizontally on low wooden frames, then a carving of the protector deity Jambhala in jet black stone, kneeling as if about to leap, holding a huge ruby in the shape of a treasure vase, an intricate silver statue of the Future Buddha; and behind them a stately Buddha on a golden throne, the throne not the traditional one of lotus flowers but the dragon throne of the Ching empire.