Lord of Death: A Shan Tao Yun Investigation (26 page)

Shan found a T-shirt on the floor, pressed it to his mouth and nose, and searched the ruin of the room. A nylon pack, mostly melted into a blue plastic lump. Several novels in English. Three long metal poles, the trekking sticks favored by foreign trekkers. Clothes strewn everywhere, some clearly belonging to a woman. A small chest of drawers under a window on the side wall, the drawers all hanging open. Two empty duffel bags. Four cardboard boxes, sealed, labeled YATES EVEREST EXPEDITION. He returned to the entry and considered the scene. Before the fire someone had been searching, looking for something that belonged to the Americans. He considered where he would hide something in such a simple open space, then moved along the walls looking behind the few pieces of furniture, under the drawers. Nearly gagging on the smoke, he cracked the window on the side wall and studied the ceiling as the smoke was drawn away. He stepped on a chair, then on the chest of drawers by a window on the side wall, studying the angled roof and its beams. Finally he spotted a dark patch in the shadow of the corner nearest the door. He grabbed one of the trekking sticks and probed, feeling resistance, jerking the stick sideways to dislodge a small gray backpack.

Urgently Shan searched the zipped compartments, discovering at last a compact notebook festooned with pencil drawings of flowers, mountains, and birds. He was opening the inside cover as the glass on the back window shattered. Three small metal canisters were thrown in quick succession onto the bed. The sudden rush of oxygen ignited the bed’s smoldering contents as the door was slammed shut from the outside.

Shan, still standing on the little chest, kicked out the window as the far side of the room burst into flame. He was halfway through the opening when the first of the fuel canisters exploded.

He found himself on the ground ten feet from the building, face in the dirt, his ears ringing, his fingers aching from their white-knuckled grip on the American’s notebook. The bungalow was already a ball of fire. If he had not been at the window, in a position to kick it out, the first explosion would have knocked him out, the second and third would have killed him.

With what seemed to be a great effort he climbed to his feet, stuffed the notebook inside his shirt, and was staggering away as the first of the workers ran around the corner of the warehouse.

“The fool Tsipon ordered the fire crew away,” the man groused, and started yelling for buckets of water.

Shan, knowing his hidden assailant would be powerless to act with so many witnesses, could not resist a look inside the notebook. He scanned the early pages before putting the old truck into gear. The American woman’s name was printed in neat letters on the inside cover, which otherwise was covered with a list of mountains flanked by small sketches of monks and prayer wheels. Most pages contained diary-style entries and random technical notes about climbing, some outlined in boxes, some written sideways or even upside down. They were flanked by more images in pencil, mostly of Tibetan scenes or objects though some, like a moose and a cow wearing a large bell, were from other continents. But it was the diary entries that interested Shan. They began with a date three years before, written in Katmandu, then quickly shifted to entries from the southern base camp on the Nepal side of Everest. There were sketches of climbing routes, maps showing advance camps, lines of poetry, transcription of haiku, even names of sherpas with comments on their skills, a single line in large black letters that said,
Wherever there are humans you’ll find flies and Buddhas
.

As he pulled out of the parking lot his mind was racing faster than the fire truck rushing toward the warehouse. One of the first names mentioned on Megan Ross’s list of sherpas was that of Tenzin Nuru.

SHAN LEFT THE old truck in a clearing half a mile below Tumkot and was picked up by Yates in his red utility vehicle a few minutes before he reached the village. Shan motioned the American to park in the shadow between two sheds at the edge of the village.

“Does this mean anything to you?” he asked as he took a peche sheet removed from his workshop and rolled it, extending it to the American. “A prayer rolled like this?”

Yates took the little cylinder of parchment, unrolled it, repeated the process himself. “Maybe just a way to store a prayer? Or a way to put it in a mani wall, or one of the little statues,” he added. He seemed utterly fascinated by the rolled prayer. Shan let him hold on to it as they moved along the dirt street and down the worn stone stairs that led to the main square.

No one was home at Kypo’s house. Ama Apte’s house was likewise empty. Shan lifted the bench outside the fortuneteller’s entry and set it inside, in the shadows just past the pool of light cast through the open door. Yates, restless as ever, wandered around the dimly lit stalls of the lower floor, asking Shan the Tibetan names of some of the implements, the meaning of some of the fortuneteller’s signs drawn on the wall inside the door. He stumbled over something lying in the shadows and the goat leaped up with a surprised bleat. Frightened at first, it quieted as the American stroked its back. Shan saw the animal’s swollen udder, found the tin bucket the astrologer kept by the door and began milking as Yates sang a song to the goat about a racehorse named Stewball.

There they sat, like two lonely shepherds, when Ama Apte walked in with Kypo and her granddaughter. Though they bore the grime of heavy trekking and looked exhausted, Ama Apte’s son advanced on them as if to eject them from the house, resentment in his eyes.

“We are not your enemies, Kypo” Shan stated, putting a restraining hand on Yates as the American began to rise.

“You are not Tibetans.” Kypo’s voice grew heated as he spoke. “It’s always the same. You outsiders dabble in our affairs like it is some game, then leave us to take the punishment.”

“Tibet should be for Tibetans,” Shan declared. “If my leaving improved the chances of Tibetans achieving their own country again I would pack my bag tomorrow.”

The words hung in the air. Kypo stepped in front of his daughter as if to protect her, nervously watching his mother.

“Easy for you to say,” Ama Apte replied. “Just words.”

Shan returned the woman’s steady gaze then looked down at the packed earth floor between his feet, fighting an unexpected feeling of melancholy. “In the yeti factory,” he stated, each word like a spasm of pain, “my son is a prisoner. If I cannot find the truth of the killings by the day after tomorrow they will use his brain for a medical experiment.”

Not even the goat moved.

“Jesus, Shan,” Yates gasped. “You never. . . .” His words drifted away.

Kypo uttered a curse under his breath. His daughter clutched his leg, pressing her head into his hip.

“It is time for the truth,” Shan said, gazing pointedly at Ama Apte. “It is time for all the truth. No fortunetelling. No dice. No hiding in the future or behind the fates. You were searching Megan Ross’s tent at the base camp. You didn’t find what you wanted.”

“You don’t know that,” the woman replied in a brittle voice.

Shan reached inside his shirt, extracted the notebook and dropped it on an empty stool. “This is what you wanted.”

Ama Apte sighed, her eyes wide as she stared at Megan Ross’s journal. “We shall have tea.”

As the astrologer stepped to the doorway to work her churns, Shan scanned the last few entries in the notebook. Anticipation was in the words, even excitement, starting with a visit to a particular curve in the mountain road.

Nathan says it is all too dangerous but he showed me how to rig the
site so no one would have to be there. He must think I am some kind
of engineer. Began to lay out the new route up the North Col. Nathan
wants a private route up, so we won’t keep running into the other expeditions.
When Tenzin arrives we will start scouting.

Next came a poem about mountains in the moonlight, like silver steps to heaven, then sketches of birds and a hairy seated figure that might have been a meditating yeti. The next day brought a reference to the road, and the reason Ama Apte had been looking for the book.

Ama Apte and I walked the slope today. Bless her, she says I should
not worry, that she will do this for me and the mountain, and the monks,
that there will be enough moonlight for her to set it up the night before
. Then, after a sketch of a ritual dagger,
Tenzin arrived!
followed by a matter-of-fact entry about the new route above the base camp and calculations of the number of oxygen bottles needed for the first expedition, ending with
Nathan and I are insisting that every
bottle be carried back down and that any customer who leaves litter on
the top slopes will never climb with us again!

The last entry was short.
Went up to inspect the first advance camp.
I found Tenzin there alone, separated from the others by the heavy blow
on the slope above. He agrees with the whole plan, will organize the
sherpas to hold up a banner supporting the Compact at the minister’s
picnic at Rongphu. Had to leave him before dawn to catch an unexpected
ride to town. Have to ask Tsipon why we are leaving so much money in
the Hong Kong accounts. I told Ama Apte we will rewrite the future of
Chomolungma!
They were the last words.

When he looked up, Ama Apte was staring at him, holding the hot water kettle. “She told Tenzin,” he explained. “She told him everything. It got him killed.”

Ama Apte’s eyes filled with moisture. “But he wasn’t anywhere close. He wasn’t going to do anything but hold up a banner.”

It was Yates who explained. “There was another person who knew, an invisible one who couldn’t leave Tenzin alive to say he had used Megan’s plan as a cover for murder.”

The fortuneteller said no more until she had handed her visitors mugs of tea. “Let us go to the yeti factory,” she announced. “Let us find a way to rescue your son.”

Shan replied with a small, sad smile. “Thank you but no. That is something only I can do.”

“They are the new gods, you know,” she said into her cup of tea. “What they write down a thousand miles away becomes our truth, like the old lamas who once wrote our sutras. They hung a new slogan on the municipal building.
The Party Is Our Buddha
.”

Kypo bent to his daughter and pointed to the door.

“No,” his mother said, putting a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “She must hear this. She has no choice but to live with the new gods. There is no going back. The old gods and the old Tibetans, all we can do is to find ways to fade away with dignity.”

Kypo’s face drained of color. He knelt and tightly embraced his daughter, as if it was his turn to be frightened.

“So is that what this is about, Aunt Ama?” Shan asked in a flat voice as he rose. “It’s your way of giving up?”

A tear ran down Ama Apte’s strong, handsome face. She bent to the kettle and poured more tea.

“Last summer, at the end of the season,” the astrologer said, “Megan came to me, and said she wanted to stay here with me for the winter. It was illegal, I told her. It would endanger Kypo, because the authorities would assume as a local climbing manager he was behind it. She didn’t argue, she just asked me to go with her up one of her mountains. A hard climb, but not one needing ropes. We were gone five days. On the last night she watched the stars for hours, like a meditation. She said the universe was different in Tibet. She said she was going to die here again.”

“Again?” Yates asked.

Ama Apte offered a sad smile. “That’s what I asked. She said she had a sudden realization on her last ascent of Chomolungma, as she stood on the summit, that she had lived here in another life.”

“You’re trying to make it appear I was involved with her, in the ambush,” Yates said after another long silence.

“No. Only I was involved, with a little help from a tarchok ghost,” Ama Apte confessed with a glance at the notebook. She did not look at Yates, just stared into one of the flickering lamps by the kettle.

“You tried to get me arrested by Public Security,” Yates accused, “by putting a robe in my trash and those snaplinks with beads under my bed.”

“Not arrested,” Shan said, “only deported.”

Ama Apte was biting her lip like an anxious girl.

“I never did anything to hurt you,” Yates said to the woman.

“You don’t understand,” the fortuneteller said, her gaze not shifting from the flame. “You could never understand. Just know it is a killing season on the mountain. Go home. Even if you try the ascent, the mountain will push you back.”

“Without the climbers,” Kypo said in a near whisper, “I can’t put food on my family’s table.”

Ama Apte replied only with her eyes, which held a sad, soulful expression that Shan saw on old lamas, the look that said the only answers that meant anything were the ones you found for yourself.

As he studied her Shan began to sense that all the mysteries, all the questions about the killings, the strange behavior of so many Tibetans had begun with the mystery of who Ama Apte really was.

“We should eat,” she announced in a new, spirited voice, and clapped her hands to rouse everyone from their trance.

The mood quickly shifted as the astrologer returned to the role of mother and grandmother, instructing Kypo to bring a larger brazier, her granddaughter to retrieve water, Shan and Yates to carry trestles and planks outside into the rear courtyard of her house for a makeshift table. They ate thick
thanthuk
noodles and mutton, making quiet, casual conversation, Kypo and Yates at last laying a map of Chomolungma on the table to discuss the always complicated task of staging supplies at advance camps.