He put his hands in a mudra, the Diamond of the Mind. He had to explain things to Jakli and the Maos, but he did not understand them himself. He had to simplify, to focus on the simple explanations, for they were usually the right ones. Prosecutor Xu hated Tibetans. She was the likely one to have discovered that Lau was a Tibetan nun and, if so, was tracing any of the zheli with Tibetan roots. She or her enforcer had gone to the Red Stone camp and killed the first boy, who had been with Khitai. They said Khitai had no Tibetan roots, but they had said the same about Bajys. Or perhaps Khitai, who had been the first target when the killer had extracted information from Lau, was just a Kazakh boy who had the Tibetan thing that Gendun and Lokesh were so concerned about— Lau's treasure, the thing that now was being passed from orphan to orphan, one step ahead of the killer.
When he opened his eyes he noticed something in the corner, a long piece of coarsely woven woolen that might once have covered a meditation cushion. He lifted it and saw with a start that it covered an artifact of Senge Drak. It was a graceful bow, unstrung. Pulling the cloth entirely away, Shan found a small bowl of camphor wood, carved with intricate geometric designs. He lifted its top and found, lying in a neat curl, a bowstring, exactly as its owner had left it— when? A century ago? No. Jakli had said the dzong had been abandoned for centuries. Two or three hundred years, perhaps. He picked up the bow and laid it in his lap.
He retrieved the covered bowl. There were four rows of repeating designs, two on top, two on the bottom. He and his father had passed many hours exploring the Tao te Ching by using throwing sticks or dice to randomly identify verses. But their favorite method was finding patterns in their environment and reading the patterns to derive tetragrams, the four line combinations that, in the charts memorized by all students of the Tao, referenced one of the book's eighty-one chapters.
Shan counted by sixes along the top rows of tiny triangles. After the final set of six, three remained. Three was represented by a broken line of two parts in the system, the base of the tetragram. He drew the line in the dust of the floor with his finger. After counting the second row, comprised of tiny flowers, two remained, meaning a solid line for the next segment of the tetragram. The third row, of miniscule circles, added up to ninety-seven, leaving one, which in their improvised system meant another solid line. The last row of little squares yielded five at the end, for a line broken in thirds. The tetragram he had drawn in the dust was a line of three parts over a solid line, then a second solid line, over a final line of two parts. In the Tao te Ching chart the tetragram translated to fifty-six. He smiled sadly. The verse had been inscribed on the door of the secret temple he had frequented in Beijing during the years when the government had kept temples closed. He recited it out loud, whispering it the way a warrior monk in the cell might have whispered his rosary.
Those who know do not speak
Those who speak do not know
Block the passages
Close the door
Blunt the sharpness
Untie the tangles
Harmonize with the brightness
Identify with the way of the world
Shan contemplated the aged bow a long time after he finished. Then, slowly, with a tremble in his hands, he unrolled the ancient bowstring and fitted it to the bow. Why weren't bows used in all meditation? he wondered. So perfectly flexible, so perfectly taut, so perfectly focused. He remembered a blizzard day in his prison when a lama had issued all the prisoners imaginary bows and had them shoot imaginary arrows for hours, until no one could tell if they were drawing the bow or the bow was drawing them. He drew the bow back and held it, reciting the Tao chapter again and again. He held it until it hurt, until he knew what he had to do, and longer, until the danger of the thing he had to do was out of his mind and the bow was drawing him. Then he closed his eyes and in his mind took aim at a paper bird.
Chapter Nine
The truck bound for central Tibet departed when dawn was but a hint of grey on the horizon. One of the purbas sat on the hood with a small flashlight to avoid the telltale glare of headlights. Shan watched the truck from the rocks above as it coasted down the long slope, slowly climbed the next ridge, and disappeared into the vastness of the changtang, then slung his bag over his shoulder and starting walking.
He could tell from its birthing that the day was going to be clear and crisp, and he walked with vigor, his feet watching the path while his eyes watched the stars as they twinkled out. The air seemed to murmur, though he felt no wind. A nighthawk called. Something started in the rocks in front of him, fleeing with a clammer of small hooves.
In his mind he heard the Tao verse, as crisp as the call of the bird. Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know. Auntie Lau knew but she could no longer speak. Perhaps the dead American had known something, something about a broader conspiracy that was reaching into Yoktian. The dead boys could not speak, but sadly, he suspected they had known nothing at all about why they had died. The purbas and Maos were not shy of speaking, but their words were too often clouded with bitterness and hate.
As he walked with the sun rising over his right shoulder, he consulted the mental map he had made of the route Jakli had driven through the mountains. It was frustratingly short. He had slept too long in the truck the day before. Where his map ended, he would just keep moving north, toward the haze of the desert.
He walked two hours to the main road, and it was another hour more before the first vehicle approached. He jumped behind a rock and watched as a minibus, its sides badly dented and scarred as though it had barely escaped an avalanche, passed. In its windows he saw sheep standing on the passenger seats. Half an hour later he was walking on a steep curve around a high rock wall when the sound of another motor echoed down the road. He wedged into a split in the wall and watched a small car, its engine sputtering and belching greasy smoke, roll past. He eased out of the opening as it disappeared and found himself in the path of a truck whose approach had been masked by the car. As it pulled to a stop he recognized the odd-looking vehicle.
He sighed, then sat on a rock and put his bag on his lap. Jakli turned off the engine, climbed out, and sat beside him without speaking. The wind began to blow. A few small cotton-bright clouds scudded across the peaks.
"Sometimes on special days like this," she said after a few moments, "when it's so clear and deep, like a lake in the sky, you hear things. Groans and rumbles, the sounds of the earth. When I was young my Tibetan grandfather said it was the sounds of the mountains growing."
They watched the clouds.
"I said if they would just grow high enough, maybe everyone would just leave us alone."
A small grey bird landed and looked at them. "Why won't they leave us alone?" Jakli asked the bird in a voice that suddenly seemed to have the fatigue of an aged woman. She offered Shan her water bottle. He drank and handed it back, watching the bird as it watched them.
"This road," she said, with a vague gesture around the curve, "it goes north, out of Tibet. Not to Nepal, just back to Xinjiang."
Shan nodded. "I have eight days to get to Nepal. I am going back to Xinjiang first," he said softly, not wanting to frighten the bird.
"You have two days," Jakli corrected him. "After that no truck could get you there in time."
"I'm not going far, just to Yoktian. To the office of Prosecutor Xu."
Jakli considered his news a long time, then sighed. "If you confess to the killing of Sui," she said matter-of-factly, "just to call off the knobs, then I will stand up in the town square and say you're lying. I'll say that I did it."
He offered a small grateful smile. "I would give up much to keep the knobs away," he said. "But I will not give up the truth." Shan had simply realized that of those who knew but would not speak, the Prosecutor and her files perhaps knew most of all. "If Xu had discovered that Lau was a Tibetan nun," he said, "it would explain much. Why she has reacted so severely, made so many arrests. It would mean a campaign not against her traditional targets, but against Tibetans. And it would mean Kaju, the new teacher, must be one of the agents working secretly."
"But even so, what could you do?"
"Find proof about Kaju and expose him. Then even if we can't find them the children will stay away from him. He'll have to leave."
They watched the clouds. The sun emerged and lit the nearest of the snow-capped peaks so brilliantly it hurt the eyes.
At last Jakli sighed. "Where you go," she said, pushing her windblown hair from her face, "I will take you. We will find a way for you to leave in two days."
"No. You have a job, making hats. If you can make it to the factory, it's the safest place for you."
"It's a town job. I don't like it. They didn't ask me if I wanted to work in the city. I served my time behind the wire. They can't imprison me in a town too." She stretched, pushing her hands toward the sky. "Besides, I
am
going to my factory for a while, if the patrols don't block us. Check in, make some hats, just for fun." She pulled the bag from her lap and rose.
"It's too dangerous for you," Shan said, realizing that he had heard Akzu use the same words with Jakli. "I don't want you involved anymore. Please. You have a new life planned."
Jakli seemed to find the words amusing. "I could say the same about you," she said with a twinkle in her eye and stepped to the truck.
He followed her reluctantly and climbed in the passenger door. "If I write a letter," he said as the truck pulled away, "could you get it delivered to Lokesh? I left my blankets stuffed with sacks to fool the purbas. He was asleep under his already."
"Sure," Jakli said agreeably. "Just write and give it to me."
Shan retrieved his pad and opened it to a blank page. "He has no address," he added. "The purbas will know where he is."
"Actually, they don't. But I know the address. Kerriya Shankou," she said.
"Kerriya Shankou?"
Jakli waved her hand toward the rugged windswept landscape. "This pass. Entrance to Xinjiang. Postal code is the back seat."
Shan turned in confusion. The back seat was covered with a tarpaulin. He raised one corner. Lokesh was underneath, sleeping.
"He said he hoped you wouldn't be disappointed in him, that he was sorry to play a trick on you with his blankets. Looks like you all played a trick on the purbas."
"What do you mean?" Shan asked, looking at his old friend with a frustrated grin.
"They left in the dark, thinking all of you were under the blankets as they had instructed. But when I rose after dawn I heard someone outside, shutting the heavy door at the top of the rock. There's a flat rock there called the sentinel stone, between the lion's ears. I found Gendun on it. An hour later Bajys walked in. Said he jumped out of the truck because he discovered Gendun was missing."
"But Lokesh should stay with Gendun," Shan said.
"He said he has to go to the school in Yoktian. He said he would walk all the way if he had to." Jakli kept her eyes on the road but Shan saw her smile. "Said he didn't want you involved anymore, that he felt better knowing you were safe and going to your new life."
"Why the school?"
Jakli shrugged. "Because of Lau. Because of my friend the Tibetan nun." She mouthed the last words slowly, as if getting used to their sound.
* * *
The Ministry of Justice office in Yoktian had been built to palatial dimensions. Indeed, Shan realized as he studied the two-story structure's tiled roof and balconies from a bench in the town square, it probably had been built as a palace, though early in the last century. He remembered the crescent moon flag he had seen in Osman's inn. Yoktian had been a regional capital in the Republic of Eastern Turkistan.
As he sat and waited he watched a team of municipal workers progress along the stucco wall that surrounded the Ministry building. The three men in blue coveralls were attacking a series of posters that appeared to have been recently glued to the large bulletin boards that hung on the face of the wall. Not a series of posters, he saw, but at least twenty of the same poster. It held the image of a red-haired woman with light skin and large round eyes. Along one side of the poster was a line of Chinese ideograms, along the other a matching line in the Turkic alphabet.
Niya Guzali
, the poster said. Then, below that,
Niya is our Mother.
The crew was stripping the posters away. Where the poster hung tight, they unrolled and pasted another poster over it.
One Heart, Many Bodies
, it said in bold Chinese ideograms, with no Turkic counterpart, then
Achieve Success by Building Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.
One of the men, as he finished pasting a poster to the wall, looked nervously about, as if he feared something or someone in the crowd that milled about the square. Shan surveyed the square. With a chill his eyes settled on two grey uniforms, knobs holding automatic weapons standing on the far side of the square, watching the work crew. Or perhaps protecting the work crew.
