Lord of Death: A Shan Tao Yun Investigation (35 page)

“She never said anything to Wu—”

“So you
were
there. She never had time to say anything because Wu had already decided she had to die, for exposing her role with the Red Guard. But you realized as soon as you pulled the trigger that by forcing you to shoot the American Wu was making you a slave, not a partner. You knew difficult questions would be asked about an American who died in the minister’s presence. If the questioning grew too difficult she would have given you up as the killer, would have exposed you as the traitor to the Dalai Lama’s fighters.”

Tsipon seemed to shrink. He looked at Shan as if he was the only one who could understand. “She always wanted more. First it was ten percent of my new hotel in exchange for the permit, then when she arrived at the hotel she demanded twenty percent of the expanded hotel. She was always the commander and everyone else a lowly soldier. I worked on that hotel for years. But that morning she called it
her
hotel.” Tsipon looked forlorn, though not beaten. He looked at his watch. “I’ll be missed. The trial is about to start.”

“We’ve already started the trial, Tsipon.”

“What are you talking about?”

“For the real murderer of Minister Wu, and the one who arranged the murder of Director Xie of Religious Affairs.”

Tsipon took a quick step toward the door and grabbed a large wrench from the workbench, slamming it down on Gyalo’s restraining rod. He reached the door, flung it open and froze. Two Public Security soldiers stood in the entry.

He looked back toward Shan, real worry entering his face. “What is your game, Shan? You have no authority.”

Shan stepped to the light switch by the garage door and illuminated the bay. The color drained from Tsipon’s face as he saw the diminutive woman sitting in a chair by the rear wall.

“I think you know Madame Zheng,” Shan observed. “Surely someone in the Party must have told you she is the presiding judge of the tribunal? Did you know she has been visiting your office in your absence, looking at your records?”

Tsipon hesitated a moment, unable to disguise his fear now. “You have no evidence!” he snarled at Shan.

“We have your own words explaining your motive.”

“What I said was nothing!” Tsipon glanced uncertainly at Jomo. “Give me the keys! I’ll drive myself.”

Jomo did not move.

“Shooting Tenzin in the chest, like Ross,” Shan continued, “must have seemed like an inspired trick at the time. If you were to substitute the bodies, the new victim would have to be shot, since the soldiers had already reported two dead of bullet wounds. But you had thrown Tan’s gun away before you encountered the mule on the trail. The holes you left in Tenzin’s chest were huge, no match for any weapon Public Security was familiar with. Forty-five caliber, the Americans call those bullets, big enough to stop a horse. Or a mule. No one here would have such a weapon. It was an impossibility that Cao chose to ignore in order to make his case. But Megan Ross explained it all to me.”

Tsipon grew pale. “She’s gone. You never spoke with her.”

Shan reached into his pocket and produced the folded photo he had taken from Ross’ gau. “She had taken this with her to prove you were connected to Wu, as leverage to get both of you to listen and comply with her terms. She didn’t know she would be implicating her own murderer.” Shan held the photo up for Tsipon to see. The Tibetan reeled backward, as if losing his balance.

Shan tossed the photo on the hood of the car.
The People
celebrate the final victory in Shogo
, said the caption. Names were printed below. A much younger Tsipon was there, with Wu and two other officers. Each face was upturned as they fired into the sky. Each held a heavy pistol, a forty-five caliber, captured from the American stockpiles.

“You can’t prove I was there with Wu!”

Shan gestured into the shadows and the young patient from the infirmary emerged. “You thought all the soldiers involved that day had been reassigned, unreachable. But one was forgotten, because he was sent for medical treatment. The corporal was the driver of the bus, and bravely walked up to the murder scene despite his wounds. He saw much that day. It was negligent of you not to arrange his transfer too.”

Shan had warned the soldier to keep quiet, to let Tsipon assume he could testify not only about Megan Ross being killed, but also that he had seen Tsipon at the scene.

“And we mustn’t forget that account you set up for the minister.”

“Speculation. You have no idea—”

“You probably weren’t aware that there are special anticorrup-tion protocols with all the banks in Hong Kong. You should have chosen Singapore. Madame Zheng will have all the names on the accounts by tomorrow.”

“That was business as usual for people like Wu,” Tsipon protested. “You know Beijing, everyone—.” Tsipon’s words died away as he looked at Madame Zheng, Beijing’s special emissary.

There was movement behind Tsipon. The two soldiers were at his side now. One glanced at Madame Zheng, who nodded, then began fastening manacles around Tsipon’s wrists.

“You killed them,” Shan said, “you killed them both and let me be dragged away to take the blame.”

“You’re nothing but a gulag convict,” Tsipon muttered. “Worthless to society. They were always going to take you for something.”

Strangely, Tsipon tested the manacles, stretching their short chain tight as if he did not think they could be real. His expression as he looked up at Shan wasn’t anger but stunned disbelief. “They can’t run the mountain without me,” he ventured in a hollow voice.

“Negotiate, Tsipon,” Shan offered. “Keep negotiating. The government’s priority is to pursue every scent of corruption, especially when high levels are involved. A new murder trial would be messy since Americans would have to be brought into it now. Madame Zheng came here not for the murder, but for the corruption investigation against Minister Wu. Who knows? You may have a chance to escape a bullet if you cooperate on the corruption charge and give evidence against those truck drivers.”

“Once every Tibetan in this county wanted her dead,” Tsipon said to the floor. “They would have stood in line to pull the trigger.”

More officers appeared, guns at the ready, eyeing the Tibetans suspiciously. Madame Zheng snapped a command and they lowered their weapons, then surrounded Tsipon and turned him toward the door. “They can’t run the mountain without me,” he repeated in a bleak voice as he was led outside. They were the last words Shan heard him speak.

Shan turned to speak with Madame Zheng, but she was gone. He found her in her limousine, the rear door open, waiting for him. “I need a report from you,” she declared after he climbed in and the car began to move. “The kind you would have written ten years ago.”

“I was sent to the gulag for writing reports like that.”

She looked him over. “There’s nothing more we can do to you.” For the first time Shan saw the trace of a grin on her face.

“Cao will not like it.”

“Major Cao will be returning to Lhasa within the hour.”

Shan looked out the window and considered her request. “I need doctors, real doctors,” he declared. “I want one to be sent to Tumkot village, to care for a woman who was stabbed. I want another one sent to the yeti factory. I will give you the patient’s name. And the monks from Sarma gompa. I want them all released.”

Madame Zheng extracted a small tablet and began to write.

Chapter Eighteen

THE SUN WAS edging over the mountains when Tan and Shan were met at the entry to the yeti factory by the facility’s senior officer on duty, a plump Chinese knob still displaying crumbs from his breakfast on his uniform.

“We’re here for one of your inmates,” Tan announced.

“I’ll need orders.”

“His name is Shan Ko,” Tan stated impatiently.

“That one?” the officer replied with a sneer. “He’s in isolation. I couldn’t release him even if I wanted to.”

The man’s defiance was like a salve to Tan’s wounds. Shan watched as a familiar fire rekindled in the colonel’s eyes. For a moment Shan almost interjected himself, to save the officer the torment that he knew was to follow but the man cast him a dismissive, arrogant glance and Shan stepped back to give Tan full rein.

Like a bird stretching a wing that had been broken, Tan lifted his arm and with a perverse zeal gestured the officer into a vacant office and closed the door. Shan could not hear many of the words they spoke, but the tones of the knob were unmistakable, shifting quickly from petulance to anger to fear. When Tan emerged from the room, the officer sat at a desk, muttering orders into a phone. He looked as though he had been hit by a truck.

Five minutes later Ko was wheeled toward them on a hospital gurney, his cardboard box of possessions at his feet. With a stab of horror Shan saw that half his scalp had been shaven clean. Then a quick inspection showed no incisions had been made. His son’s eyes were shut, his breathing shallow, beads of sweat on his brow. Shan whispered his name and shook his shoulder, with no response.

They stood alone in the entry, Tan’s fury having scattered even the security guards. After a moment the colonel gestured toward a sign that said PROCESSING and helped guide the gurney down the corridor. The admissions office adjoined a double glass door leading to the parking lot, where two ambulances sat, their drivers leaning against one, smoking.

Tan found the only uniformed man in the office, a junior officer who seemed to be in charge. “I want an ambulance and driver, now. With a full gas tank.”

“It’s not permitted to take the ambulance out of the county,” the knob protested, stepping into Tan’s path.

“You’ll get it back when I am finished with it,” Tan growled, fixing the man with his icy stare. “I am Colonel Tan, military governor of Lhadrung County. Keep talking and I’ll take you back with me.”

The man swallowed hard, glancing in confusion at Shan and the gurney, then let Tan pushed him aside.

Minutes later they were on the highway, heading east, Tan in the front passenger seat, Shan on a metal bench beside Ko’s narrow bed in the rear compartment. It would be several hours’ drive to Lhadrung.

Shan watched the high peaks slipping into the distance, his eyes fixed on the indentation on the horizon that marked the valley where Tumkot lay. He had taken supper there the night before, a peaceful, intimate meal with Ama Apte, Yates, Kypo, and his daughter. As Yates had presented a compass and climbing boots to his new niece, Kypo and Shan had helped Ama Apte, her arm in a sling, serve the meal. When they began to sit Ama Apte had arranged two more plates on the table and as if on cue a figure had appeared in the doorway. Jomo had stepped inside with an anxious expression, his half-hearted protests ignored as Ama Apte silently led him to a seat beside Kypo. Then she had gone to the door and pulled in someone else, a figure who struggled against her at first, then allowed himself to be led, limping, across the floor. Gyalo, washed, freshly bandaged, and looking strangely serene, was wearing the robe of a monk.

“It’s time you met Tumkot’s new lama,” Ama Apte had announced as she settled Gyalo on the bench beside her.

AFTER THE FIRST hour Tan ordered the driver to halt. He motioned Shan out of the compartment to join him on a small knoll by the road. Shan watched in confusion as Tan gathered dried grass and twigs into a pile. Tan lit a cigarette, then with the same match ignited the small fire before reaching into his tunic and producing a familiar dog-eared file. “They took this from my office without my permission,” he observed in a flat voice. He ripped off the first page in the bound file, a description of Shan’s last disciplinary proceeding in prison, and dropped it into the flames. He extended the rest of the file to Shan like a solemn offering.

Shan accepted the file with a trembling hand and stared at it in silence. “Do you have a pen?” he asked at last.

A question lit Tan’s face, but he handed over a pen without a word.

Shan sat on a rock with the file in his lap. He carefully wrote his father’s name on the file and folded down the corners like an envelope before lighting a small cone of incense.

Somehow Tan understood. “A message to the dead.”

Shan nodded. “I haven’t been entirely honest with my father when I send him messages. He thinks I have been on some kind of pilgrimage with old Tibetans these past years. It’s time he understood.”

Tan did not reply, just gathered more wood to build up the fire before Shan dropped in the file.

“Congratulations,” the colonel said as they watched the last ashes float away toward the mountains. “You have officially become nobody.”

As they returned to the ambulance, Tan climbed into the back to sit by Shan. The colonel straightened the blanket over Ko, grasping his still-twitching hand when he finished. The colonel would feel the effects of his torture for weeks, Shan knew. They glanced awkwardly at each other then looked out the small window at the peaks of the Himalayas retreating on the horizon.

“On the road crews,” Tan ventured after a long time, clearly struggling to get his words out, “allowing the workers to wear their malas and gaus wouldn’t interfere with their labor.”

Shan pondered the words, taking a minute to piece them together. Tan was speaking of the prisoners in the gulag labor camps he oversaw in Lhadrung, and of the prayer beads and prayer amulets that had always been denied the Tibetan prisoners.

“No,” Shan agreed in a tight voice, “it would not interfere.”

Tan nodded without expression. “I will issue an order when I return.” His gaze drifted back toward Ko. “And I will see he has a place in the prison infirmary.”

“No,” Shan said. “He needs to be in my old barracks.”

“You mean with the old lamas.”

“The ones who are left.”

The colonel nodded a sober assent.

They grew quiet, and arranged blankets on the bench for cushions, then leaned back. Shan checked on Ko every few minutes, his heart growing heavier as he found no change, no sign that Ko would emerge from his coma. Gradually his fatigue overwhelmed him and he fell into a fitful sleep, punctuated by dreams of Ko spending the rest of his life gazing into the distance with empty eyes. When he woke, the Himalayas were only shadows on the horizon and there was a pile of damp gauze bandages where Tan had been wiping his son’s brow.

“Three hours more, maybe four,” the colonel observed. “We can stop for tea and—-” Tan’s words died away.

Shan followed his surprised glance toward the bed and met Ko’s weak but steady gaze, lit by a crooked grin. Then, with unspeakable joy, he watched as his son’s hand reached out and closed around his own.