"What do you mean?" Jakli asked.
"I had to talk to Xu, I have to understand where she is in this. She told me something that makes me believe Sui was killed by someone over money, a competitor."
"There is only one lieutenant assigned to Bao," Fat Mao said with a frown. "Sui had no competitor."
"Not a competitor for rank," Shan said. "For bounty." He swallowed more of the tea and explained what Xu had told him.
"The bastards," Fat Mao muttered when Shan finished. "They're unaccountable to anyone. It's not even about their socialism anymore. Just money."
"They can be accountable to us," Ox Mao grunted.
Jakli seemed to recognize the glint in the big Kazakh's eye and held up her palm as though to stop him. "Nothing. Don't do anything. Not until all the boys are safe."
"But you heard him," Ox Mao said with a conspiratorial nod toward Shan, as if he had decided to forget the episode in the toilet. "The general comes in a few days."
Shan looked at Jakli. The general was coming. The boys were being stalked. But the clans were gathering. One last time, the clans were gathering. And Jakli had to get to a new life.
The stout woman returned with Shan's clothes, still damp, and began cooking a meal for them. When he dressed and reappeared, she inspected him with a matronly air. Seeing dirt on his shoe, she rubbed it with her dish rag. It was her way of apologizing, Shan knew, and he accepted her hospitality with quiet nods as they started the meal, the woman serving Shan first.
When they had finished Fat Mao rose and pulled folded papers from a jacket hanging on the wall. "That truck driver," he announced, "the one who found Sui." He pushed the papers across the table to Shan. "We realized Sui had no money on him. We had the man's license number, so we tracked him down in Kashgar. After a couple of hours of persuasion he admitted stealing the money, but said he spent it all in a bar in Kotian. About a dozen drinks and a particularly enthusiastic
mai chun nu.
" The phrase meant
girl selling spring.
A prostitute. "But when he grabbed the cash he grabbed some papers with it. He was glad to get rid of them, said they scared him when he finally read them."
There were only two sheets. One was a list of the zheli, the official list printed from the school computer, with Khitai's name underlined and a note beside it that said
Red Stone camp.
At the top of the page Lau's name had been written, with personal information. The room number of her office at the school. A description of her horse.
Brown horse, white face
, it said. There was another name Shan did not recognize. North Star Enterprise. He pointed to it.
"A garage," said Fat Mao. "Not just a garage— a blacksmith, a stable. Lau kept her horse there. Ox Mao checked it today. The afternoon before Lau died, she took her horse. Ten minutes after she left, a man who looked like Sui came in and rented a horse. In civilian clothes. Brought the horse back the next morning, drenched in sweat, worn out. The owner yelled at him, but Sui just smiled and threw him something that shut the man up. A piece of gold."
"A Panda?" Shan asked.
Fat Mao shook his head. "Gold in the form of a two-inch Buddha."
Jakli moaned and looked at Shan. They had seen the little solid-gold Buddhas before, in the sanctuary room at Karachuk, the room where Lau had died.
The other page held handwritten notes. In one corner was a series of numbers, sums of money, underlined repeatedly. Calculations of bounties, in multiples of five thousand. The price for an orphan. And in the center, a rough map, with a date on it. Over his shoulder Jakli gasped. "It's tomorrow. The map is to Stone Lake. Sui was going to Stone Lake for the boys."
"But he lost the competition to a better murderer," Fat Mao said grimly, "and now that killer is going instead."
Chapter Eighteen
Stone Lake was an abandoned oil field camp, a place on the fringe of the desert where fossils were found in the outcroppings. As she drove, Jakli explained that Lau often took the zheli there in the autumn, between the summer and winter temperature extremes to collect fossils and imagine the world as it existed when the fossil forms lived. They drove on a rough track cleared and compacted for oil crews thirty years earlier, across a coarse, gravelly plain dotted with clumps of ephedra and the other tough stunted shrubs that, like some of the clans, had learned to survive where few other life forms could exist. Sand could be seen in the lee of boulders. Sometimes, as they crested low hills, Shan saw the endless white expanse of the Taklamakan in the distance.
As the shrubs began to disappear and the barren desert landscape took over, Jakli stopped the truck Fat Mao had provided them, paused to look for any approaching vehicles, then released air from the tires for better traction. She climbed back in and eased the truck off the road, cresting the dune that ran parallel to it, then drove for another mile in a trough between dunes before surmounting a second dune and stopping in its shadow.
They climbed out and she led Shan along the dune for fifty yards, then onto a low rise. At the top they stopped and surveyed a long bowl between the high dunes. Rock formations were scattered along the edge of the bowl and at the south end a cluster of cement foundations could be seen, with several sun-bleached timbers rising out of the sand, the ruins of the oil camp. Past them, near the south end of the bowl, was the frame of a building that swayed in the wind, and beyond it, fifty yards away, a dip in the encircling dunes where the road entered the camp. Several smaller structures, looking like tool sheds and housing for machinery, were scattered across the southern end of the bowl. The largest, big enough to garage a dump truck, was built of cinderblocks with two large rusted metal doors that opened at the center. It had survived the desert conditions better than the other structures. Beyond it against the dune on the opposite side of the bowl was a much older ruin, a stone foundation with part of a mud-brick wall still intact, its timbers no doubt long ago scavenged for fuel. To the north lay the desert, broken only by a single clump of shrubs perhaps three hundred yards from where they stood. Shan gazed to the far south, to the distant peaks of the Kunlun, where Jowa now searched. He was going to the lama field, with a Mao guide, to the grave of Khitai, in case Gendun and Lokesh visited.
A small dust devil spun around the bowl. A bird, a large carrion eater, floated overhead.
"No one," Jakli said, but as she spoke Shan pushed her down, pointing silently toward the road at the end of the bowl, where a man and a dog had just appeared at the crest of the dune.
As they watched, their eyes barely above the dune, the man turned and waved to someone behind the bowl, out of sight. Moments later two more figures appeared, another man and two boys wearing the dark, bulky clothes of herders.
They watched as the boys scampered down the dune toward the garage, the intact structure in the center, followed by one of the men.
"It's Kaju," Shan said. "But who's the other?"
"Akzu!" Jakli exclaimed, and she bolted over the dune.
Shan followed reluctantly, watching Akzu and the dog. Akzu could warn them of anyone approaching. But even if he did, where would they go? They had no place to hide.
They reached the building at the same time as the boys. A moment later Akzu arrived and greeted Jakli with an embrace, then turned toward the boys. One was Batu, who looked sheepishly at Jakli, then explained quite soberly that he had had a dream of a beautiful horse that had spoken to him and told him that as the oldest of the zheli he had the obligation to protect them. Akzu offered a silent nod, as if he was familiar with the power of such dreams. The second youth was introduced as Jengzi, a name that hinted of Tibetan origins. Jengzi offered a shy grin as he was introduced and tossed a stone against the metal doors. He stood close to Kaju, as if wary of Shan and Jakli.
Kaju watched the road with a worried expression.
"Is someone else coming?" Shan asked.
"I don't know. With Jengzi here, only one boy is left. High in the mountains, away from everything." He gave Shan a knowing glance. Micah, the American, had not come.
"I mean, from town," Shan said.
"No," the Tibetan said in an uncertain tone. "Director Ko said to bring them back when I was done, so he could present their gifts. I said after all that happened I didn't expect anyone to come."
Shan nodded. He was watching Jengzi as he listened. Jengzi had come from one of the shadow clans. He might know where Micah was.
Kaju followed his gaze. "He speaks Tibetan," the teacher said quietly. "He has an old rosary, says someone gave it to him as a baby."
"Where did you find him?" Shan asked.
"On the road, five miles south. Walking. It's what his zheli family does, he says. His foster father will not be seen. He won't go on roads, treats them like they're poison. He distrusts everyone. They came out of the high mountains last night, to bring Jengzi, then went back into hiding in the foothills. They will return to pick him up at dusk."
As Shan took a step forward, Kaju touched his arm. "Ko said something else, as I left. He said to ask if the boys would like a helicopter ride. He said he might bring the Brigade helicopter here. Ko just wants to help," the Tibetan added in an uncertain voice.
One of the boys let out a cry of surprise. Shan turned from Kaju to see Jengzi pointing excitedly toward the shadows inside the building. In the darkness beside a broken window at the rear of the structure the outline of a figure could be seen, sitting on a steel barrel. Kaju jerked Jengzi back.
"Hungry, anyone?" a deep voice called out. "I brought us some multicultural cuisine. Peanut butter." Jacob Deacon stepped out of the shadows.
Shan watched the American as the boys greeted him warmly, As if they knew him already. They eagerly grabbed the jar from his hands, opening it to explore its contents with their fingers.
The American embraced Jakli and nodded at Shan, then extended his hand to Kaju. "Small class for the new teacher," he said.
Kaju grasped his hand with a nervous glance toward the road. "I didn't expect Micah's father today. Not with all the trouble."
"Trouble? What trouble? Lau wanted the class to hear about the archaelogy digs and hear about fossils. Weeks ago she asked, and I said I'd come. I came."
"But how? You came so far?" Jakli asked. "What if someone saw? The knobs."
Deacon held his palm up to silence her protest. "Not so far, if you go straight across the sand. With a good compass and a good horse, only four hours. I left at midnight. I'll be back before the sun sets."
"You've been waiting all this time?"
Deacon pointed to a small backpack at the foot of the barrel. "I've always got research to write up." He spoke in an absent tone as his eyes restlessly surveyed the dunes. Not for the danger, Shan knew. For his son. He had come for his son.
Shan watched as the two boys squatted at Deacon's feet, still excited about the American peanut butter.
"Micah," said Batu with a grin. "He takes peanut butter with rice. He makes balls out of it." The boy looked up at the American. "Let me take some back. I'll see him in the mountains this week, I know I will. Malik and I—" The boy cast a guilty look toward Jakli and Shan. "We're going to ride up near the glaciers to look," he said in a low voice. He pulled on the American's hand until Deacon looked away from the dunes. The American knelt beside the boy and began patting his pockets, as if searching for a container that might carry a few ounces of peanut butter to Micah.
Kaju glanced back toward Akzu, who had returned with the dog to squat on the dune overlooking the road. "People are scared," he said to Deacon. "The family he's with, they're so shy. Next class, it's the full moon. A few more days. I'll be here," the Tibetan added. "I'll come alone."
"Sure," Deacon said, his disappointment obvious. "Next class." He looked at Shan and winked. "Got a date on the full moon."
Shan offered a small grin. At least amid all the tragedy there were two good things. Jakli was starting a new life with Marco's son. And Deacon would be under the full moon with his son, listening to their insect orchestra.
Suddenly the dog started barking. They looked back to see Akzu rise. He raised his hand straight up, then lowered it to the back of his head as if scratching it.
Kaju gasped. "It's the signal," the Tibetan said urgently. "Someone is coming. Someone he has to warn about."
"Shit!" the American spat. "Shit and double shit." He began fumbling in the pockets of his baggy pants as Kaju herded the boys toward the shadows inside the structure, away from the line of sight to Akzu, who stood waiting for someone now, facing the road. The Kazakh was staying on the dune deliberately, Shan realized, so the new arrivals would come to him, so they would be visible from the building. Jakli and Kaju quickly pulled the doors shut, leaving a crack a few inches wide to see through.
A moment later a man appeared at Akzu's side, shorter and wider than Akzu. As he began speaking to the headman, he turned toward the bowl and his uniform came into clear view.
