Beautiful Ghosts (57 page)

Half an hour later Shan stood with the colonel, surveying the 404 work site with a puzzled expression. The prisoners were back in the lower valley, clearing and leveling fields at the base of the high cliffs.

“I thought you would have kept them in camp,” Shan observed. As he studied the landscape something tugged at his memory.

“We are not going to be cowed by rumors,” Tan said, and lit a cigarette. “They were already at work when I discovered Ming’s report.” Shan followed his gaze toward a silver car parked between two army trucks. Ming’s car.

“You mean he didn’t tell you himself.”

“Apparently he was not planning to share his insights with me.”

As if, Shan knew, Ming was hoping the escape would be successful. Ming’s desperation had not affected his political prowess. Tan would be discredited. Ming would deflect any investigation into his own activity, and his political acumen proven to Beijing. If the golden Buddha were located by Ming without witnesses, it would make him a rich man. And if the golden Buddha were revealed publicly Ming could simply seize it for his museum amid national headlines. The political gold Ming was harvesting in Lhadrung was worth more than the amban’s treasure to him.

Tan did not object when Shan moved toward Ming’s car. The doors were locked but in the backseat was a cardboard box, with several hammers and chisels inside. A hundred feet down the road was a small sturdy truck with three men sitting in the back, waiting. Ming had planned for every contingency.

The prisoners labored in the field at the base of the high cliff, carrying rocks, breaking the earth, pushing barrows of dirt to fill in low swales. But the only guards were the handful of soldiers who maintained the two-hundred-yard zone between the prisoners’ field and the Tibetan farmers scattered over the adjoining plots. He followed Tan, still chained to him, along the back of the work site, toward the grey trucks that would take the prisoners back to the barracks at the end of the day. Tan seemed careful not only to avoid any opportunity for Shan to reach speaking distance from any prisoner, but even to make eye contact. He pulled Shan along at a near trot, studying the landscape with a predator’s eyes.

“Perhaps it is indeed only a rumor,” Shan suggested in a weak voice as they reached the trucks.

“Every house, every camp in the hills is abandoned,” Tan announced in a terse voice. “Herds have been left in canyons, guarded only by dogs. We can find no trace of the people.” When he stared at Shan his eyes held a cold fury, but also something else, something that almost looked like pain. “Don’t make me do this,” he said. “If you want to stop it, do it now.”

Shan did not reply.

Tan studied Shan in silence, clenching his jaw repeatedly, then pulled back the canvas cover on the truck behind them. Half a dozen soldiers sat inside, alert, an unsettling hunger in their eyes. In front of them was a machine gun mounted on a tripod.

“There’re two more squads,” Tan explained. “Hidden in the rocks and the thicket at the base of the cliff. Procedures are dictated.” He gestured toward an aide standing in the shadows nearby. “Lieutenant. The protocol.”

The young officer stepped forward and straightened. “If there is sign of mutiny among the prison population one warning will be given, sir, and those who cooperate will be allowed to escape the fire by lying on the ground below the bullets.”

It wasn’t possible, Shan told himself. Surely they had not struggled so long to find the truth about Zhoka and the robberies, paying such a terrible price already, only to be led to this catastrophe. Surely Liya and the hill people would never be so foolish as to try, Tan would never be so foolish as to respond with such violence. But Shan looked into Tan’s eyes and knew otherwise. There was no cruelty left in Tan’s eyes, only a hint of sadness. He wouldn’t order the guns to fire because of cruelness. He would do so because of policy, because of standing orders that gave him no discretion on how to quell prison revolts.

Shan studied the scene again, desperate to understand, hating himself for telling Tashi to tell Ming the Mountain Buddha was moving, that Dolan was trying to find it. All Shan had wanted was to separate Ming from Dolan. But now Ming’s greed could destroy the 404th prison brigade. Ming was going to stage an uprising, or cause an uprising. If he had been satisfied with a false tomb surely a false uprising would be adequate for his purposes. “The man named Lu left with Ming from the mountains,” Shan said.

“He’s not been seen.” Tan blew two streams of smoke from his nostrils. “We have no reason to look for him. You have yet to prove any of them to be criminals.”

“Yao proved it.”

“Yao’s report disappeared in Beijing.”

As they spoke, the museum director appeared at the edge of the field, wearing an army jacket over his white shirt. Someone walked beside him, draped in a long army coat, moving with small, uncertain steps, a broad-brimmed hat on his head. The figure was too tall for Lu, but Ming seemed to know him well, pausing with a hand on his shoulder, leaning toward the man to speak in his ear. Ming, too, was uncertain, Shan sensed, he only knew that the treasure was close now.

Tan’s impatience was becoming obvious. He lit another cigarette, then a third, one-handed, tapping the pack, extracting a cigarette with his lips, pulling Shan along the perimeter, pointing when he saw movement in the rocks at the edge of the cliff, cursing when he saw first a scurrying pika, then a large ground bird.

As Shan’s gaze moved back toward Ming the coat suddenly fell from the shoulder of Ming’s companion, though the man kept moving as if not noticing it was gone.

Shan’s arm shot forward of its own will, only to be abruptly stopped by the manacle. It was Surya. Ming had brought Surya to the prison brigade. It could be his way of inviting an incident, for eventually Surya would not be able to hold back, would be drawn to the old lama prisoners, and when it happened he would be deaf to the protests of the guards, would break the security line without regard to his own safety. Or it could be Ming’s way of assuring that Shan would not interfere.

“Ming acts like a damned political officer,” Tan groused. “Strutting along—” Tan stopped midsentence. There was a new sound. The distant bellowing of an animal, Shan thought at first, but then, after faltering, the sound became stronger, steady, a strange grinding vibration in the air. Most of the prisoners halted, staring with wonder at the cliff, where the sound seemed to originate, its power amplified by the rock face.

“Dungchen!” Shan heard Ming exclaim from nearly forty paces away.

Smiles appeared on the worn faces of the old men in rags, who had all ceased work now, dropping their tools and barrows. It was one of the long telescoping horns that he had last heard at Bumpari village, one of the horns that summoned the faithful, a sound most of the prisoners had not heard for decades.

“Dungchen!” Ming repeated loudly, as if hoping to incite the prisoners.

Tan’s aides began scanning the wall with binoculars. There was no visible sign of the horn, but the top of the cliff held many clefts, covered in shadow, where the horn could be hidden.

Whistles began to blow. Half the guards along the perimeter began moving among the prisoners, yelling at them, cursing, lifting their batons in threat.

But the more the horn blew, the less the prisoners seemed to notice the guards.

“Buddha’s breath!” one of the old men called, and Shan remembered how the phrase had been used in the prison tales, to describe the deep resonation of the horns. But to Shan it sounded like a booming throat chant, as if the mountain itself was throat chanting, rattling its soul. As if the Mountain Buddha were coming.

“Back thirty paces,” a dry voice commanded.

Shan was not even sure Tan had spoken the order, not certain it hadn’t been imagined somehow. But as he watched, one of Tan’s aides ran among the guards, who slowly, reluctantly, retreated along the perimeter. Tan slowly moved along the field’s edge, his face dark, sometimes pulling Shan, until they were in front of the trucks again. Shan watched the colonel, and saw that through his thinning veil of anger, a strange, remote curiosity had entered his countenance.

The sound continued for over five minutes, the guards scowling, the prisoners slowly gathering in the center of the field, the old ones still smiling, the younger ones circling about their old companions, as if to protect them. Beyond the work site the farmers began to pause in their labors, looking toward the cliff.

Suddenly the top of the high rock wall began to shift. A prisoner called out in joy. An officer called out in alarm—but even he did not move, transfixed like everyone else at the sight. A Buddha had materialized on the wall. It was one of the huge ancient banner paintings, fifty feet wide and twice as long. Without a doubt it was a work of Zhoka, for the image had all the features of the living god paintings, the huge serene smiling face looking out over the valley like a blessing, one hand holding a begging bowl, one in the earth witness mudra. The hair was blue, with a green halo around it, the eyes alive, the skin glowing with a bright gold paint. Shan knew then that he had read about the painting in Brother Bertram’s journal. He recalled the pulleys and rotten yak ropes on the underground ledge, the long cavity that must have been used to store the painting, the bones arranged by Lodi to point out the location to Liya, the ox-like herder’s report of people carrying things away from Zhoka the night after Lodi’s death. It was the festival banner, unrolled from the top of the gompa’s central tower on special days. The Mountain Buddha.

Prisoners began dropping to the ground into the lotus position, some offering loud prayers of gratitude, some standing as if paralyzed with joy, tears streaming down their smiling faces. Shan became vaguely aware of the sound of an engine being started, and turned in time to see Ming speeding away.

The guards had their batons out now, most looking expectantly at Tan, several watching Surya, who was wandering, face uplifted to the Mountain Buddha, toward the prisoners. His aides darted to Tan’s side, one pointing back toward the valley. The farmers were running across the fields, hoes and rakes in hand. Children were streaming out of the few houses that could be seen, all converging toward the Buddha banner.

One aide gestured Tan toward the side of the truck. When Tan looked at the officer but ignored his obvious request to move, Shan realized the colonel had assumed a position directly in front of the gun mounted in the truck. Tan raised his head and gazed at the banner in silence.

“A monk!” an aide gasped, pointing to the top of the cliff above the banner, where a maroon-robed figure had appeared. Even from the distance, there was no mistaking the figure. From the start this had been what Gendun had meant when he said he would liberate the prisoners.

“Hard to tell at such a distance,” Tan said after gazing at Gendun. “I think it’s a goat.”

As the aide raised binoculars to his eyes, a second, older officer pushed them down. “The colonel said it was a goat,” the older man reminded the first.

“We can summon a helicopter,” the first aide said. “Sever the lines with bullets, land troops on the top.”

Shan realized Tan’s eyes were on him. The colonel looked at him with the same impassive gaze he had held on the Buddha. For a moment he seemed to search Shan’s eyes, then he sighed, and turned to his aide.

“No helicopters are available,” he told his officers. “This,” he said, gesturing toward the giant banner painting, “is an exercise arranged by Director Ming. They are cleaning an old artifact in the wind. Tell the men they have responded well to my training exercise.” His face hardened, and he snapped several orders. The hidden soldiers jogged out of the rocks and thicket, boarding the truck with the other soldiers in combat gear, which then roared to life and headed north, leaving only the older aide and the prison guards.

“The prisoners have worked exceptionally hard this week,” Tan said in a gruff voice. “They will no longer be productive in their work for the people unless they take an hour’s break. I order them to stand down.” He did not release Shan from the manacles, but handed him his binoculars. In the lenses Shan could clearly see the features of the lama on top of the cliff. Beside Gendun was Fiona, in her festival dress, her arm around Dawa. Jara, too, was there, and perhaps thirty other hill people. From somewhere behind Shan, from among the farmers, a bell began ringing.

It was a strangely quiet celebration, all the prisoners eventually sitting on the ground, some chanting mantras, the farmers gathered at the line of guards, children pointing to the huge Buddha, many of the older Tibetans embracing, some dropping into the posture of prayer. Surya walked among them, pausing to kneel among the children. Even from the distance Shan could see his smile. More and more Tibetans were arriving, some on foot, some galloping up on horseback.

Several of the farmers began tossing apples to the prisoners, over the heads of the guards, who looked at Tan uncertainly but did nothing to stop them. It became a strange ethereal kind of picnic, some of the prisoners taking up song. Tan seemed determined not to let Shan get closer to the prisoners, but did not object when Shan lifted the binoculars to study them. He spotted faces he knew, and longed to go to them, would have gladly suffered the batons of the guards to hear some of the old lamas say his name again, but Tan would not remove the manacle, and kept Shan in the shadows, where the prisoners would not see him.

Tan smoked, one cigarette after another, silently studying the prisoners, watching Gendun, not objecting when a Tibetan woman ventured close, nervously glancing at Shan, then offering them both apples from a pocket in her apron. Tan stared at her uncertainly, accepting the apple, his mouth opening and closing several times as if he could not find words. “Thank you,” he called at last, to her back, so softly she probably didn’t hear.

Tan tossed aside his cigarette, then they ate their apples slowly. When he was finished eating Tan signaled the officer, who blew his whistle. The prisoners began to rise. The banner began to roll back up on its ropes.