Prayer of the Dragon (33 page)

There were only three beds for visitors in the upstairs chamber. When Shan arranged a blanket for himself on the floor Yangke argued, saying he should take it, as the youngest, relenting only when Shan explained that after so many years in prison he was unable to sleep on a mattress.

As Gao began to draw the curtains Shan put a hand on his arm. “No. Don’t give them any reason to think we are trying to hide.”

“You think they are watching? Impossible.”

“Some people feel impending rain in their joints,” said Shan. “I can feel Public Security in my spine. They are out there, a team, at least two men, maybe four.”

“What are we going to do?” asked Yangke in alarm.

“What we are going to do,” Shan said as he removed his outerwear and stretched out on the floor, “is sleep.” But he did not sleep right away, for he had read the folded paper from Gao. It was a record of Bing’s assignments in the Public Security Bureau. For the five years immediately preceding his retirement, Bing had been commander of prison guards at a gulag camp near Rutok.

It was perhaps two hours past midnight when Shan awoke, trembling, from another recurring nightmare about Gendun and Chodron. Lifting his boots from the floor beside him, he tiptoed down the stairs, into the silent factory building.

There the gods awaited him. Lit by moonlight filtering through a high window, tiered rows of tiny Buddhas, Taras, and saints stood, waiting to be painted and packaged. An army of miniature Tibetans waiting for a signal. Lokesh would have said a prayer over each one.

He sat in a pool of light facing the little figures, like a lama facing his students. Or perhaps from another perspective, they were like a legion of lamas patiently abiding their single, faltering student.

He lowered his head, shamed by his earlier relapse into his Beijing incarnation. “I’m sorry,” he heard himself say to the figurines. “I strive to become a shape like them.” His audience of perfect little ceramic gods would know he meant Gendun and Lokesh. “But the only clay I have to work with is that which I brought from the outside.” He fought a chaos of thoughts, forming his fingers into a mudra, Diamond of the Mind, and focusing on it, letting the storm within him blow itself out. Eventually, for the first time in nearly two weeks, he found a quiet place, a meditative place, and worked to stay there. It was, as Gendun once told him, like balancing a smooth weathered rock on the tip of one finger.

His meditation ended abruptly, a long time later. Something was lurking at the edge of his consciousness. The words that sprang onto his tongue seemed to bypass his mind.
“On mani padme hum,”
for the Compassionate Buddha, then other words for each of the images he recognized among the little figures. Some were words he had not spoken since learning them on dark winter nights from very old Tibetans, risking the penalties of curfew to speak them.
“Om ah vajre gate hum,”
he finally added, and paused, wondering why something inside, unbidden, had offered up the words for the Green Tara, the Droljang Tara. Of all the manifestations of the Tara he might have chosen, something within him had settled on the aggressive protector form.

His mind became impossibly clear. He heard an insect crawling on the window, a mouse scratching at the rear of the building. He began reviewing the events on Sleeping Dragon Mountain, starting with the moment he had set foot in Drango village, reconsidering every piece of the puzzle, changing their positions, twisting them like little pieces of colored glass, watching them transform in hue as he turned them this way and that. His fear receded, replaced by what some of the Old Ones would have called the mind of the warrior protector. By the time he rose, the moon was low in the sky and he had begun to grasp the pattern of the puzzle.

He bowed to the assembled deities in gratitude and went toward the front of the compound, pausing at the factory door as he reminded himself of what Yangke had said on the helicopter. Tashi had promised he would “ride with the gods” all the way to India.

Gao stood in the dark in the doorway. He spun about at Shan’s approach, then relaxed. “You were right. There are two of them.”

Shan stepped to his side. Gao was watching a shadow inside a shadow. But then the man drew on a cigarette, casting his face in a quick orange glow.

“I wish Heinz were here,” Gao said. “He knows about such things.”

“Have you spoken with him?”

“I called the hotel where he keeps an apartment. He checked in. But he had to drive to the airport. He’ll phone tomorrow.”

“But you’ll be gone tomorrow.”

“No. I can’t leave on the same helicopter that brought us here. Ren would note the serial number and make the pilot talk. Then the mountain will be smothered with soldiers. You would never find the killer.”

Gao was repeating Shan’s own warning back to him. The scientist too must have been meditating in the dark. He seemed to have finally accepted that the only justice for his nephew would be unofficial justice.

Gao tapped a compact instrument on his belt. “My satellite phone. I called the pilot. He landed at a nearby base after arrang- ing to have a mechanical problem. He will take the helicopter on a test flight and come at dawn, without lights.” Gao reached into his pocket and handed Shan a wad of banknotes. “This will make up for the gold you used.”

Shan went to the backpack they had left there earlier. He extracted the digital camera, fumbling until finally he discovered how to scroll through the stored photos. When he found the one he wanted he extended the camera to Gao. “Can you print this here?” he asked.

Gao studied the photo. It was of Abigail Natay, cheerfully sitting on a rock, left foot under her body, right foot hanging over the edge. Her hair was upswept, adorned by flowers. After a moment Gao went to the computer on the desk and then pointed to the printer. A still image emerged. Shan retrieved the photo, placed it in his pocket, then checked the window again.

On the adjacent table, dimly lit by the street light, was the photo of Kohler, his arm around a woman’s shoulder. They were on a beach. Shan held it up. “Where was this taken?”

“In the south of India. Heinz does a lot of business there and has made friends. The company owns a house and a warehouse in India.”

“You must enjoy the contrast in climate.”

When Gao did not reply Shan realized his mistake. “They won’t let you out,” he said. The government’s lifeblood was secrets, and Gao was a walking vault containing the most dangerous secrets of all.

“If I want sun,” Gao said, “they arrange for me to speak at a conference on the southern coast of China. With an escort.”

Shan replaced the photo and rejoined Gao at the window.

“When you find Abigail Natay,” Gao said wearily, “bring her back to my house. But first we must find a way to get the three of you out of here before sunrise.”

Shan considered the problem only briefly. “What time do your workers arrive?” he asked.

AN HOUR BEFORE dawn, Gao switched on the light in his office and walked purposefully to the window, pointing to the blush of pink in the eastern sky as Shan, then Hostene and Yangke appeared beside him. He gestured toward a table that had been positioned near the window, then closed shut the filmy inner curtain and sat with them. The office manager appeared with a tea tray.

They waited several minutes, talking and gesturing broadly before signaling for the first of three early-arriving workers who were squatting along the wall. Shan rose, approached the wall as if to look at a picture, then flattened himself against it and sidled out of the room. The first worker took his place at the table. Soon the three of them were outside.

Shan watched from the deep shadows until the nearest watcher lit a cigarette with a match, destroying his night vision. Shan motioned to his friends and they headed to the soccer stadium. Soon they were airborne. Shan was ready to wake the dragon.

Chapter Eleven

THE FIELDS THAT had fed the inhabitants of Drango village their entire lives were black and barren. In the charred fields, they crouched on their hands and knees to glean a few intact kernels, sometimes finding an entire seed head that had survived the flames. Their hands and faces were covered with soot, and with their desolate expressions they seemed to be wearing the masks Shan had seen used in ritual plays portraying fleshless puppets of the dead.

Yangke ventured into the village. He returned with a warning that Shan should not seek out Lokesh and Gendun. The villagers were still dazed by the catastrophe that had struck their village, and the only thing they knew for certain was that their troubles had started when Shan and the other outsiders arrived. Gendun was now under double guard because Lokesh and Dolma had tried to move him.

“To where?”

“I don’t know. Away, out of the village,” Yangke replied. “They had him on a litter, but weren’t even able to carry him past the fields. If Dolma wasn’t an elder, Chodron would have had her caned too.”

“Was Lokesh caned?” The words seemed to choke Shan.

Yangke slowly nodded. “Thirty strokes of Chodron’s bamboo rod. He demanded to know where you were.” Yangke restrained Shan, who had taken a step toward the village. “He’s not there. I couldn’t find Lokesh or Dolma. But they said he is all right, that he hardly seemed to notice the cane, that he—”

“—recited a mantra and looked toward the sky as he took the beating,” Shan finished in a hoarse whisper. How many times had he seen it before, in their prison camp? Forty? Fifty? At times Lokesh had difficulty bending, because of all the scar tissue.

“Chodron is furious. His generator is broken. He has no radio contact. He keeps hounding the man who is trying to fix it. Everyone is afraid of him and his men. They’re hiding from him.”

Shan had seen the headman observing when the helicopter left them on the slope above the fields. He must have thought Gao was still with them or he would have rounded them up.

“And Gendun?”

“He sits in Dolma’s house, reciting the death rites when he has the strength. For Thomas. For Tashi. For Professor Ma. The villagers took the farmer who died to the fleshcutters. They asked Chodron who killed him. But he told them they must wait until the festival. No words have been recited by the dead farmer’s family. They know if they perform any act of devotion, Chodron will punish Gendun.”

Shan’s throat was so dry he had trouble speaking. “You saw Lokesh?”

“No. He and Dolma must be locked inside too.” Yangke recognized the furious expression that crossed Shan’s face. “Dolma will have ointments for Lokesh’s back. He will be safe. You can’t go down there.” Yangke scanned the slope above them with a worried expression.

“Hostene has started climbing,” Shan explained. “He wants to be alone. He knows where to meet us.” Shan stood, slung his pack over his shoulder, and starting walking. After half a dozen steps he paused and looked over his shoulder. Yangke had not moved.

“You are going to seek out ghosts,” Yangke said.

“Someone once asked Lokesh what I do,” Shan said. “He told the man I am a confessor of ghosts. It’s the best description I have ever heard. In my experience the only people who can be relied upon always to tell the truth are the dead.”

When they arrived at their destination it was late afternoon. The hermit Rapaki was not in his cave. There was no sign that he had been there since he’d fled during their first visit. Hostene had lit a small fire and balanced one of the hermit’s battered saucepans on two rocks to boil water. Shan could see the Navajo scanning the mountainside. Every hour that passed brought his niece closer to death. He had urged that the helicopter drop them off as high up the mountain as possible. Shan had resisted, explaining that they could not risk being spotted by the miners in Little Moscow or spooking the killer.

Shan lowered himself against a rock at the mouth of the cave and found himself blinking away sleep. A warm southern breeze carried the scent of gentians. A bird warbled from a grove of junipers. When he awoke, less than an hour of daylight was left. Soup was cooking. Somewhere behind him, in the dim cave, Yangke was whispering the soft syllables of a mantra. Hostene sat on an outcropping, watching another of Abigail’s videotapes.

When Shan entered the cave, Yangke ignored him. Had Rapaki returned? Shan lit a butter lamp and squeezed through the narrow opening that led to the chamber the hermit used for refuse. The chaos of trash and stores was gone. Someone had cleared the central part of the room, arranging the debris into piles in the two far corners. For the first time Shan saw that the floor had been painted, probably centuries earlier. There were faint broken lines of color, tiny staggered ovals that led from the eastern wall, defining a wide circle at first, then spiraling inward in a counterclockwise direction, making six—no, eight—ever smaller loops until it ended among images that had been recently ravaged. Since his last visit someone had destroyed the center, roughly hacking at the floor with chisel and hammer, leaving only a few colored shards that offered no clue as to what the focal images had been.

Ovals. Hubei’s brother had learned how to use the video camera so he could film ovals on a fresco Abigail could not reach. Shan explored every inch remaining of the strange pattern, following it outward now, discovering that the outer lines of marks did not exactly form a circle. The outer ring of the circle was broken. Two lines bent and climbed the adjoining wall. With his dim light Shan followed the lines upward. They each ended over his head in jagged shapes that looked like lightning bolts. Here, on the wall in front of him, the oval shapes were best preserved. He held the lamp against the wall and realized the little marks weren’t exactly ovals; they were more like plump figure eights. Footprints. The lines were made up of symbolic footprints. Abigail had been here, had probably helped clean the cave in order to study the old signs on the floor. She had found a map of the pilgrim’s path. This was the place of beginning—for pilgrims, for Abigail, probably for the killer. And now for Shan and his friends.

He followed the ovals back down the wall, unable to make sense of them. Then he stepped back to survey the faded characters on the wall as a group. They were all demons, the most fearful members of the Tibetan pantheon—not protector demons but the devils that had been integral to Bon belief long before the Buddhist saints had reached Tibet. They were the flesh-eating, fanged devils who wore skulls around their necks. The style of the paintings was like none he had ever seen in Tibet, crude yet powerful. But if Abigail was correct in her hypothesis, he should expect to see images unlike any found elsewhere. He followed the spiraling footprints, pausing at each of the demons along the way. When he reached the ruined centerpiece he gazed up, as confused as ever. There was no correlation to the mountain, no connection to the geography outside. It was simply a map to hell.

He took out the tiny piece of plaster he had been carrying with him since his first visit to Little Moscow, when he had been thrust against the fresco. He laid it beside the rows of ovals and walked around it, considering the ever-shifting pieces of the puzzle of the Sleeping Dragon, then studied the lines that led to the images on the wall, trying to identify the demons depicted based on their similarities to more modern images. There was a black bull that no doubt signified the Lord of Death, another signified suffering, others delusion and the impermanence of life. It was a map of the kora, though not a literal map.

At the mouth of the cave Yangke was stirring the soup. Dried branches had been added to the fire. Hostene was gathering twigs. As Shan lowered himself beside the fire he saw that Yangke was now cleaning containers in which to serve the soup. He had three of Rapaki’s empty cans beside him and was cleaning three others.

“There’s no need—,” Shan began, then broke off as Yangke nodded into the shadows.

“She wouldn’t let me join them,” Yangke said. “She still blames me for Tashi’s death.”

In an instant Shan was on his feet, the butter lamp raised as he walked along the wall of the outer cave, pausing every few steps, fingers extended to catch any moving air. He found a fold in the rock, barely big enough for a man to crawl through. After four feet it opened into a wide passage. Juniper smoke hung about the roof of the tunnel.

They were in a chamber near whose center was a cluster of four candles, and half a dozen butter lamps were scattered around. They sat facing a wall lined with old wicker chests and huge clay jars. Lokesh was gesturing, speaking in the soft, patient voice of a teacher. Dolma was learning a mantra. Lokesh was using his own method to help Gendun and save the people of Drango village.

Feeling like a trespasser, Shan extinguished his lamp. Dolma did not trust Yangke. If Lokesh had seen Yangke, he would have assumed Shan was nearby, but still his friend had remained hidden.

Lokesh paused in midsentence, raised his eyes toward the ceiling, then twisted slightly and without looking back extended an open, uplifted palm in Shan’s direction.

Shan approached uncertainly, painfully aware that he had been disappointing his old friend ever since arriving on the mountain. He had been in many secret chambers since he had been released from prison, had thrilled with discovery as Gendun and Lokesh explained the significance of old relics in hidden shrines, often felt satisfaction that he could now explain much of their content on his own. But here he was just another intruder.

More objects came into view. Holes had been hand chiseled into the rock and pegs inserted to hold equipment. But not the equipment of worship Shan had often seen in such rooms, not robes, not the twenty different hats used to signify roles and functions in the big gompas, not symbolic offerings. On the wall were ropes and staffs of wood, short yak-tail whips, manacles with hand-forged links, ritual axes and iron goads, wooden collars that looked like shorter versions of the canque Yangke had worn, many old leather bags with long drawstrings, and, even more strangely, felt vests with many pockets.

Shan lowered himself to the floor beside Lokesh. His friend was in a state of reverence. Shan would no more interrupt him than he would have interrupted Gendun in a meditation, though the more he listened the more uneasy he felt. A chill crept down his back. Lokesh was going to the same unlikely place Shan had visited the night before in Tashtul, when the little deities had seemed to push him to where he would not have gone on his own.

“Om vajra krohda,”
Lokesh intoned.
“Om vajra krohda hayagriva.”
Powerful, dangerous words, words that Shan had heard only once before, words that were almost never written, but handed down orally, in remote secret places. They invoked one of the most powerful protector demons, Hayagriva the Horseheaded, the terrifying prince of protectors who clad himself in the flayed skin of his enemies.

“Hum, hum phat!”
Lokesh concluded.

Shan listened, strangely scared. This was not the patient, forgiving Lokesh he had known for so many years.

The old Tibetan chanted the mantra invoking emptiness, then with a flying bird gesture recited
Om ah hum
three times, then
Ha
ho hrih
, followed by the iron hook gesture, then
Om sarva bhuta
akarsaya.
They were the words for summoning all demons.

A bead of sweat rolled off Lokesh’s cheek, his hand trembled. Fear began building in Shan’s chest. His heart began rising up in his throat. There was indeed something in Lokesh he had never seen before. There was no gentleness now in the old man beside him, but rather a dark power, a raw emotion that came close to fury. Lokesh was secretly invoking fierce protective demons and barely tolerant of Shan’s presence, as if Shan were part of what he was protecting against.

He studied the room again, trying to understand, frightened for all of them now. Was it possible that the biggest of the wicker chests was glowing? Lokesh began new mantras, calling upon the tiger-riding Mahakala, then three-eyed Shridevi and snake-bodied Rahula. He wasn’t merely trying to summon a deity to protect Gendun. It was as if he were trying to rip the world apart and start over.

Then the demon rose up. With a wrenching moan Shan threw himself backward.

It was the serpentine Rahula, and it rose from the largest of the wicker chests, one that was nearly four feet high and six long. The thing gazed at the two old Tibetans then seemed to notice Shan sprawled behind them. It cocked its scaly head to study him.

The mantras had finished. Dolma and Lokesh seemed pleased at their work, nodding to the creature as it climbed out of the chest. It had a human shape beneath its demon head, human hands floated along its sides. Beginning to regain his breath, Shan watched as it kneeled in front of Lokesh and bowed. Lokesh uttered a solemn greeting, then pulled off its head.

“It’s only us,” Dolma whispered to Shan. She was at his shoulder, helping him to his feet. “We were not able to explain. The words had to be finished. There is probably not a man in all Tibet who remembers them so well as Lokesh. We are truly blessed.” She brushed off his sleeve, like a mother tidying a small son. “You remember our Trinle, the town carpenter.”

The shadow under the headdress resolved itself into the countenance of the most senior of the elders who had sat with Shan and Lokesh their first night in Drango, the silent one with the wispy beard who kept looking into the sky, the father of the guard Dolma had summoned to her house.