Lord of Death: A Shan Tao Yun Investigation (33 page)

“His eyes are too sensitive to the light,” Ama Apte said in a wooden tone. “They need special protection or he will get cataracts, because of all his high climbing. So we found a special doctor in Shigatse.”

“I think you only wear your sunglasses when the lenses aren’t in, Kypo,” Shan said. “Take them off.”

The Tibetan retreated a step, glancing back toward the passage through the rocks, as if thinking of bolting.

Yates looked from Shan to the tall Tibetan in confusion. “You’re not making any sense, Shan,” he groused. “Kypo doesn’t have anything to do with—” His words died away as Ama Apte nodded and the Tibetan lifted his dark glasses. Yates took an uncertain step toward him, looking him in the eyes, unable to speak for a long moment. “Jesus!” Yates gasped at last. “Oh Christ.” He leaned closer to the Tibetan, in disbelief.

Kypo’s eyes were blue.

Ama Apte bent over, racked with a sob. She made an effort to rise, seemed sapped of strength. There were no words from any of them, there seemed to be no words to speak.

“We always felt safe here,” Ama Apte finally said. “For months our band kept telling ourselves we could always safely escape from here across the border if things went badly. Even when the enemy soldiers became better organized, got better equipment and began climbing higher, this ridge was inaccessible to them. They had no helicopters then, and the resistance moved so quickly, hid so easily that this ridge was ruled out as a possible hiding place because everyone was certain it would take ropes and hours of work to move up its face. Only our friends knew of the secret passage.

“In the end there were less than two dozen of us. The Americans were shutting everything down. Samuel said that if he went back they would send him home to America, said it was only his remaining on this side that kept the Americans connected to us.” Ama Apte paused several times to scrub tears from her cheeks. “He would make jokes about how we would build a little house of stone and logs in a valley where no one ever came and invite the yetis for dinner on festival days.” She stopped and abruptly pulled a weed from one of the clumps of heather at her side.

“The solders came as we were finishing breakfast. They killed five of our band before we knew what was happening. Some fled up into the ice field. We killed most of those in the first wave but they kept coming, a full company or more. I shouted at Samuel to run to the ice field and hide, and he grabbed my hand and we began to move up the trail. But I was shot in the leg and fell, hitting my head, knocking me unconscious. When I awoke it was late afternoon, and no one was left but the dead. My face was covered with blood. They had left me for dead. Samuel was there beside me, riddled with bullets. He had thrown away his rifle because the magazine was empty. He had an empty pistol in his hand.”

“It isn’t possible,” Yates murmured, his voice still full of disbelief.

Ama Apte slowly unbuttoned the neck of her shirt and pulled out her gau. “In all these years,” she said, “only Kypo has seen what my gau has held.” But she opened it now, in front of Shan and Yates, cradling it against the wind. There were several rolled up papers, traditional prayers. But on top of them were two yellowed photos. The first was of a young Dalai Lama. The second, tattered from much handling, was of a smiling Samuel Yates, holding a young, beautiful Ama Apte, Mount Everest peering over their shoulders.

Chapter Sixteen

SHAN LOOKED UP at Chomolungma and saw a huge slab of snow and ice careen down the side of the mountain. Tectonic plates were crashing together below their feet. This was the place where worlds were shaken.

“It was never supposed to end that way,” Ama Apte said, looking up at Yates with wet eyes. “It was my fault that he died.”

“I think,” Kypo interjected, “it was my fault.” He understood that her pregnancy had slowed her down, had made it impossible for her to flee with Samuel Yates.

His mother reached and grabbed his hand. “Never! You were the one good thing that rose out of it.”

“My uncle,” Yates said, scrubbing at his own eyes now, “told me there was an unusual joy in my father’s letters at the end.” He turned and embraced Kypo. The Tibetan, embarrassed at first, awkwardly returned the embrace. Yates looked back at Ama Apte. “But where is he?”

“Two others came back from hiding in the ice field,” the Tibetan woman explained. “I told them it wouldn’t be the way of Samuel’s people, to be disposed of like the others. They helped me to scrape a hollow, bring gravel and some soil from the foot of the glacier. I brought heather, though it has always struggled to grow.”

Yates acted as if he had just seen the rock-covered mound at his feet for the first time. He sank to his knees, extended his hand to one of the spindly flowers that grew out of it. “He’s here?” he said, his voice twisted in confusion. He ran his hands over the grave. “He’s here. You knew him,” he murmured to the woman. “You knew him better than anyone. But you tried to have me thrown out of Tibet,” he added in a confused tone.

“Megan didn’t tell me everything, only that you were looking for evidence of the old resistance,” the astrologer replied. “I thought you were one of those reporters who came through from time to time to stir things up about the past, write something that just rekindles the anguish. I wanted you away. But then I saw your face at the camp, up close for the first time, and I thought I was looking at your father. Then it became even more important that you go because if you were anything like your father you wouldn’t stop until you were confronting the people from the past, and you would never know how dangerous they were until it was too late.”

“You put his cross on that altar,” Yates said.

Ama Apte nodded. “He and I would go there sometimes on the seventh day, on his Sundays. I would pray my way, and he would pray his.”

The American placed his hands, palm down, on the mound. “I never expected it to be like this.”

“What did you expect, Na-than?” Ama Apte asked in a tentative voice. She pronounced the name tentatively, with a gap between the two syllables, as if trying it on for size.

Yates shrugged. “I don’t know. I wanted to say goodbye, to be able to say I understood him. He was always behind me, looming like a ghost, as if we had unfinished business.”

“He took you to the unfinished business,” Shan said, gesturing to the two Tibetans.

Yates replied with a small, sad grin. “All these years, if only I had known, I could have—”

The shots came as two quick successive cracks and echoed off the rock face. Kypo grabbed his mother, trying to push her against the mound but she resisted, squirming away, leaping up and running toward the large clearing beyond the outcroppings. Shan was three steps behind her.

The coats of the three monks had been ripped open to expose the robes they had tucked underneath. Constable Jin wore a victorious smile as he paced in front of the monks, who stood in a line flanked by the two truck drivers who had assaulted Shan and Yates. Ama Apte slowed as she approached, then halted and silently complied as Jin aimed his pistol at her and gestured her toward the rock wall behind the monks.

The constable greeted Shan with an enthusiastic nod. “Comrade Shan! Imagine this. A few hours prospecting in the mountains and I strike gold!”

The larger of the Manchurians, with gray strands of hair blowing at the edge of his wool cap, glared at Shan, as his younger companion watched the pistol in Jin’s hand with a ravenous expression.

“These men are sought as witnesses to the murder of Minister Wu,” Shan ventured. “No doubt you will be commended for bringing them to Major Cao.”

Jin acted as if Shan had told a good joke. “My new friends and I are thinking more along commercial lines. We live in a free market economy now, I hear.”

“Your new friends,” Shan shot back, “killed Director Xie of Religious Affairs.”

“The official view,” Jin countered, “is that these monks committed that crime.”

Shan moved closer to the constable. “It’s a remarkable thing, Jin, when the truth starts to come out in a case like this, a little trickle becomes a sudden flood. Everything changes in an instant.”

“What are you saying?”

“I am saying that Public Security has all the evidence it needs,” Shan lied. “They will soon know the truth about these two truck-drivers. When they’re arrested they will sing like birds and you’ll be just one more conspirator. Worse, a law enforcement official who turned corrupt.” Shan mimicked a pistol with his fingers, pressed it to his head and pulled the trigger.

“Shoot him!” the older Manchurian snapped. “Shoot him and dump him with the other.”

“The other?” Shan asked. “So you did help dispose of the American woman.”

“Megan Ross is climbing somewhere,” Jin said in an uncertain tone.

“She was murdered with the minister. She is in the gully behind you.”

Jin took a step backward, aiming the pistol alternately at Shan, then at the monks. For the first time he appeared worried.

“Give me the pistol you fool!” the older trucker barked. As he spoke his companion jerked something shiny out of his pocket, flicking it with his wrist. A long narrow blade, a switchblade, appeared inches from Shan’s face.

“All we need are the gaus,” grunted the Manchurian with the knife.

“No,” Jin said. “They won’t give up their gaus.”

The oldest of the monks nodded. “We have blessings.”

The Manchurians guffawed.

“You are not able to force us,” the monk continued.

“We can force you with a bullet in your head,” the older man snapped.

“No,” the monk said calmly. “I don’t think you understand.” The youngest monk reached inside his clothes to extract the oversized lotus covered box Shan had seen at the base camp, opening it inside his coat, out of the wind. He produced a cylinder of paper fastened with a strip of red silk, which he unrolled for all to see. It held a drawing of a scorpion, with sacred words in Tibetan script running along its appendages.

“What the hell is that?” one of the drivers sneered.

“A protector charm,” came Ama Apte’s voice. She had approached Jin again, was only a few feet from his back.

“The night before those police came,” the young monk explained in an earnest voice, “our abbot went into his chambers and made this, speaking words of power over it. He only had time to make three. If he had made more, the others would be safe now.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” the older driver demanded.

“The charm,” Shan said with foreboding, “is against injury from demons.” He remembered his first confrontation with the monks in the depot tent, how frightened they had been of him, how they had clutched their gaus.

A frown creased Jin’s face as he stared at the charm.

“Fuck your mother!” the young Manchurian spat, and lunged for the constable’s gun.

As Jin dodged, Ama Apte leaped at the truck driver, pushing his arm down, causing him to twist about, slamming her shoulder with a fist, knocking her down so she gripped his legs. Then, strangely weakened, she let go. For a moment they all froze, looking at the Tibetan woman in confusion. Then she twisted, her hand to her shoulder, and they could see the knife embedded in her flesh.

Kypo, nearest the man who had stabbed her, crouched, about to spring, but then with a blur of motion Yates was on the man, hammering with his fists, slamming a knee into the man’s belly as he doubled over, clenching his fists together and pounding them into his head. As the Manchurian crumpled to the ground Shan prepared to block the attack of his companion. But suddenly Jin’s gun was aimed at the older Manchurian.

“I am the constable of this township, damn it!” he shouted in an uncertain tone. “No more!” He swung his gun back toward Shan and Yates. “But we
are
taking these monks with us.”

“No,” Shan stated. “Your new friends are just leaving. They have less than twenty-four hours left.”

“Twenty-four hours?” Jin asked as the older driver pulled his gasping companion to his feet.

“Go down with them and try to collect a bounty and you’ll be arrested. Public Security knows about the yellow bucket that summons them, and has the license number of their truck. Law enforcement isn’t as efficient as people think. It takes about twenty-four hours for the ownership and drivers of a commercial vehicle to be verified. Major Cao will have sent in the information just after daybreak. By this time tomorrow every border station, every police officer in Tibet will be watching for that truck.” He spoke to the Manchurians now. “Your only chance is to leave Tibet before then. That’s a lot of hard driving, but you might make it. Get out of Tibet and keep going. Mongolia always needs trucks.”

“Not without what we came for!” the older man snarled.

“When they catch you,” Shan replied in a level voice, “they will separate you. One of you is guaranteed a bullet in the head.”

“One?” the younger driver asked.

“They will work on you both, separately, with wires and blades and mechanics tools, later with chemicals. The one who talks first, providing evidence against the other, will get fifteen or twenty years’ hard labor. The other will be executed in less than two weeks. One of you will talk, it’s just a matter of which one.” Shan fixed the man with a meaningful gaze. “You’re still young, you can make a new life after fifteen years.”

The two Manchurians glanced at each other uneasily.

Shan looked up at the sun. “Of course by the time you get back to your truck you’ll have maybe twenty hours.”

“Fuck your mother,” the older man spat again.

Shan said nothing, just pointed at the man’s companion, who had begun running toward the passageway down the mountain.

As he watched the second man disappear into the rocks a frightened moan rose from beside him. Jin too had been watching the fleeing Manchurians, had ignored Ama Apte, lying on the ground beside him. The Tibetan woman, a long stain of blood spreading down her sleeve, had struggled to her feet. She was suddenly behind Jin, the switchblade at his throat. She grabbed the gun from the terrified constable and tossed it to Kypo. Her son quickly popped out the magazine, walked closer to the gully and tossed it in, then threw the gun into the rocks near the passageway. Jin’s face twisted in confusion as Ama Apte released him. He looked at the monks, then at Shan, as if help. “This fortuneteller is crazy!” the constable gasped.

“Before she was a fortuneteller,” Shan observed, “she was a soldier for the Dalai Lama.”

Ama Apte grinned, then loosened her grip to let Jin slide away.

“We’re going to have some food,” Shan announced to the crestfallen constable, gesturing his companions to the smoldering fire of goat dung and old crate fragments. Jin cursed and peevishly walked in the opposite direction.

“I can’t believe you let the Manchurians run away like that,” Yates complained as the others moved to the fire.

“I told them it would take twenty-four hours to track their truck’s papers. At most it will take twelve. They might get a few hours’ north of Lhasa, that’s all.”

They ate in an unsteady silence, Kypo tending his mother’s wound, which had begun to bleed profusely. “She has to go down to the lower elevation, to the village,” Yates said.

Shan nodded agreement, then began silently checking the soles of the monks’ boots.

“What are you doing?” the American asked.

“She has to go down,” Shan said. “But they cannot.”

With a grimace Yates looked up at the rough icebound landscape above them, then glanced at the climbing equipment they had left by the gully. “There’s a hundred ways to die up there.”

“The trail on your map goes all the way over,” Shan pointed out, with an expectant glance at Kypo.

The Tibetan nodded. “It’s the route of the sherpas who come across without papers. Tenzin took it last month. There’s a cliff on the Nepal side but it has a hidden goat path down it.”

“There’re border patrols,” Yates argued. “Helicopters that drop off snipers.”

“And there’s also fog and heavy wind and snow squalls. We can deal with the weather better than they can.”

“These monks don’t know anything about climbing,” Yates said, shifting to English.

“They seem to know,” Shan replied, “a lot about surviving. They have to go now. More will come for them.”

Ama Apte spoke from her seat on a rock, obviously struggling against the pain of her wound. “The mother mountain watches. She will protect you.”

Yates stared at the Tibetan woman for a long silent moment then stepped to her, cradled her in both of his arms before turning to Shan. “The mother mountain will protect us,” he repeated, then pulled out his map. “But I don’t know how far it is. And it’s nearly twenty thousand feet at that pass. We have no oxygen.”