The pungent scent of ammonia greeted him as he swung the doors open, and the only occupant of the hall, a grey-haired woman mopping the floor, looked up and gripped her mop tightly with both hands, as if he might challenge her for it. Stepping cautiously down the hall, he glanced into each room, looking for one with a lock on the door. Of the ten rooms in the wing, six were occupied, one by a sleeping nurse, but none had locks.
Shan found what he was seeking in the second corridor, a door with a lock that led to a small ward with half a dozen beds. He pushed and the door swung open. Only one bed, at the rear, was in use, and the old waterkeeper had been tied to it. One end of a long elastic bandage, the kind wrapped around sprains, had been knotted around a leg of the bed. The other end was tied tightly around the lama's hands. The waterkeeper had stretched the bandage enough to reach the floor, where he sat in the lotus position. The lama wasn't meditating, Shan saw, but staring with a curious expression at a window six feet away. A padlock was on the window, fastening it to the sill.
The old man simply nodded when Shan sat beside him, as though he had expected Shan, then gestured with his bound hands toward the window. "When the wind blows just right," the waterkeeper said in a rasping voice, "a tiny stream of sand blows in the top corner." He stared at the window and nodded. "If no one touched it there would be a dune across my bed in a few months." His voice was full of awe, as if the stream of sand was beautiful and his bed was predestined to be buried.
"Rinpoche," Shan said hurriedly, "is there a guard?" He looked down. The man's fingertips were blue. Shan began untying the bandage. "I can get you back to the Raven's Nest," he explained quickly.
"There has to be a crack," the old lama said serenely, "or nothing can get in."
Shan stopped and stared at him.
Suddenly there were feet running in the corridor. Fat Mao appeared, breathing hard, followed by Ox Mao, who shut the door tight and pressed against it, as if to hold off intruders. Fat Mao offered no greeting but darted to the window, extending a screwdriver, which he used to quickly pry up the hasp that held the window lock. He threw the window open and gestured for Shan. But before Shan could react Ox Mao had him, pulling him up, dragging him to the window. The two men lifted Shan and threw him onto the sand outside, then leapt out themselves. Fat Mao closed the window and pulled Shan around the end of the building, where a nurse stood at an open door, waiting for them.
Moments later they watched from an empty room as the waterkeeper was led outside by two knob soldiers, bound not by the elastic bandage but by steel manacles.
A thickset figure appeared behind the waterkeeper, wearing a satisfied smile. Bao Kangmei. He called out to the soldiers, who halted as Bao circled the waterkeeper. There was no fear in the lama's eyes. He simply stared at Bao with an interested, curious expression.
"Bao doesn't know," Fat Mao said, "he just suspects. He will take him to Glory Camp, to the holding cells the knobs use there." But Shan was not reassured by the Uighur's words. The waterkeeper was no longer a prisoner of the prosecutor, or the Brigade. It would not take long for Bao to understand which of the old men he had detained was a lama, which had been the subject of his subversive Tibetan poem.
Arms akimbo, Bao stood for a moment, looking at the clinic entrance as though hoping for a larger audience, then with an abrupt gesture he dismissed the men, who shoved the old lama into their truck. Shan watched the truck speed down the road with an ache in his heart, remembering the lama's words.
There has to be a crack or nothing can get in.
He had heard the words in a teaching, spoken by another lama in a gulag barracks. The waterkeeper hadn't been speaking about sand, but enlightenment. It will only be enlightenment that saves us, he was saying, enlightenment that reaches into some dark place through a crack that had not existed before.
As the knobs' truck drove away it revealed a small red car that had been parked beyond it. Bao lit a cigarette and surveyed the landscape with a satisfied smile, staring toward town, then at the clinic itself, staring so long that the nurse flattened herself against the wall in fear. Finally he stepped to the driver's door of the car, and paused. There was a beetle crossing the road not far from their window. Bao marched to the beetle, bent to examine it, then straightened, smiled, and smashed it with a hard thrust of his boot.
* * *
It was late morning the next day when Shan and Ox Mao dismounted on the flat crest of a high ridge where updrafts kept dried autumn leaves hanging in the air, like chips of pigment on the palette of the sky. The Kazakh had pointed out a rider approaching along the top of the ridge. It was Akzu, Shan saw after a moment, wearing a red vest embroidered with horse and bird shapes.
"It's over," the headman announced with a broad smile as he dismounted. "All the zheli boys are safe. We had a message from that last shadow clan, a note sent on a dog. Their zheli boy is protected they said. He will come to Stone Lake in three days. And some Maos stayed in the high mountains," Akzu explained, still grinning. "They were cutting down trees, causing small avalanches, blocking all the roads so knob patrols cannot pass through. The Maos are still up there, watching. That last boy is safe until we meet him there. We can celebrate." The old Kazakh appeared truly happy, not just because he thought the boys were safe but also, Shan suspected, because Red Stone clan had found a way to beat the Brigade's Poverty Scheme.
Akzu circled around Shan several times, then handed him a tattered fox fur cap and a pair of badly scratched sunglasses. "Nadam, it's a special thing, for Kazakhs," he said, shaking his head. "Once Han visitors came from Urumqi, a Party secretary. There was almost a riot." He inspected Shan, and pulled the fur cap lower on his head. "Your skin," he said. "It should be darker."
Before Shan understood his intentions, Akzu grabbed a handful of mud and began rubbing it on his cheeks. Ox Mao laughed. Shan looked at where the mud came from, a patch of wet soil where one of the horses had just urinated.
"You can at least smell like a horseman," Akzu observed with another grin. Shan stared at him a moment then, with a sigh of resignation, finished the task and, following Akzu's example, wiped his hands clean on his horse's tail.
The headman led them across the crest to a ledge that overlooked a long high valley. To the south and west it was bound by a vast wall of black rock, towering several hundred feet above the valley floor. To the north lay a turquoise lake, surrounded on three sides by evergreens and poplars. The impression created was of a vast chamber carved out of the mountains. The chamber was carpeted with olive-brown dried grass and furnished with perhaps fifty round cushions made of black, beige, brown, and white cloth.
Shan pulled the sunglasses from his face to better comprehend the scene. The cushions were yurts, arranged in groups of three and four, with rope corrals of camels and horses in the center of each group. Ox Mao let out a whoop of joy and left them standing on the ledge as he leapt on his horse and cantered down into the valley.
Twenty minutes later Akzu was guiding Shan through the nadam, leading their horses into a camp of three yurts. A boy called out, and Shan saw Malik and Batu running to greet him. They helped him remove his saddle and tether his horse, and then Malik, with a finger to his lips, stealthfully led him around the line of horses to a point where they could see between the first two tents. A group of six women were there, chattering happily, laughing, one even singing. A dress hung on a line between the tents and two of the women were fussing over the sleeves while another knelt at the hem. It was a beautiful white dress, onto which had been embroidered scores of flowers and horses. But there was no sign of the bride for the gown.
The other zheli boys were gathered in a tight knot around a squatting figure. Shan heard a familiar voice explaining to them how to make a whistle out of a willow branch. It was Jowa, who stood as he saw Shan and slowly shook his head. He had not found Gendun and Lokesh. And there was no sign of Marco.
The nadam was a portable Kazkah town, and the two boys were the perfect guides. Wearing an oversized felt vest with the fur cap and sunglasses to shadow his eyes, Shan wandered with them through the streets of the town. In the center of the camps a market had been organized. Loops of sweet dough fried in oil were hung on strips of vine and sold by old women; for an extra fen the loop was rolled in sugar. A mountain of green melons rose in front of an old man with one eye, who appeared to be selling very few since he was cheerfully distributing thick slices to all who passed by. Half of the vendors sold harnesses, hairwhips, or boots, the products, Shan suspected, of long solitary nights in dimly lit tents. He sat and watched the Kazakhs, nearly all of whom wore small, melancholy smiles. It was a time for celebration, but they all knew the one sad truth that no one dared speak. It was the last festival, the last time the clans of the region would be able to gather. Someone had nailed a board to a tree near the center of the encampment. On it were scraps of paper with handwritten messages and formal printed forms, announcing new Brigade work assignments for many of the Kazakhs. Small groups of two and three visited the board. Some gave sighs of relief as they read the board, and shook their friends' or clansmen's hands. Others read somberly then forlornly walked away to sit in the rocks. As he watched, Shan noticed Batu staring at the horizon with worry in his eyes. He too knew the killers had not stopped.
Beyond the camps extended a vast field. In other nadams, Malik said in a sad tone, there had always been a communal corral, with two or three hundred horses. But the Brigade had let them keep only their personal mounts. Hundreds of others had been collected by the Brigade in Yoktian, where they were being readied for shipment.
Riders were in the field, ten or twelve youths, galloping hard toward the north end of the valley.
Khez khuwar
, the boys explained, an ancient game of the clans. The girls would start twenty or thirty feet ahead of the boys, and they would race to the mark at the end of the field. If a boy caught up with a girl, she must let him kiss her, still riding, but once the girls reached the end of the field they were allowed to chase the boys to the other starting point, using riding whips to hit any boy who they passed.
They were interrupted by hoots and whistles from behind them, greetings for a rider approaching up the rough dirt road that led up the valley. Malik stood on a log and after a moment his face lit with excitement. "Jakli!" he exclaimed. Shan climbed up beside him and saw her reach the front of the camps on a lathered, exhausted horse.
As they turned back to sit on the log and watch the riders on the field, someone dangled a loop of fried dough in front of them. The boys laughed and began pulling away pieces of dough even before their benefactor could greet them. It was Jacob Deacon. He had come to record the events of the nadam, he said, and had brought more of the wooden tablets for the clansmen to keep with them when they were dispersed by the Brigade. But also, Shan knew, because he had hoped Micah might have come down out of his hiding place.
"They got a note," he said brightly, as if reading Shan's thoughts. "Just three more days."
The American was about to sit beside him when another round of jubilant shouts broke through the camps. Deacon laughed and pointed to the north. Marco was coming down from the trail by the lake, already so close they could see he was wearing an outlandish hat of felt stuffed with tall flowers and feathers. He led a heavily laden camel. "Presents from the groom's family," Deacon explained. "An old Kazakh custom."
People cheered louder as Marco approached, and then a minute later another excited murmur swept through the camps as two more riders came out of the trees. Not cheers this time, but a hushed call of important news, in a reverent tone. Two old men, one in a maroon robe, had emerged from the trees, following Marco.
Almost no words were spoken. Shan walked up the trail to meet the Tibetans, and silently took the reins of Gendun's horse to lead him into the Red Stone camp. He had found them at the Well of Tears, Marco confirmed, where they were fastening tiny red prayer flags into the rocks. Shan looked at Gendun's robe. The hem had been ripped open and the fabric torn away. The lama himself looked like something had been torn away from him. His eyes, glazed with fatigue and sadness, briefly acknowledged Shan, then settled back into his hundred-mile stare.
"Helicopters began looking in the desert," Lokesh said in a weary voice. "Marco said wandering souls would flee from the noise of helicopters, because they sound like demons." The old Tibetan sighed. "And his camel leapt pushing us with her nose. Gendon said this Russian and his camel are wise about spirits, so we agreed to go with them." He looked over the mountains, toward the desert. "It felt as though we were close to the Yakde Lama for a while. We will go back soon. There're so many lost ones out there," he said forlornly, and he let Shan lead him into one of the yurts, where Jowa was already arranging a sleeping pallet for Gendun.
Shan sat by the two old men until they were lost in slumber. When he looked up, Marco was there too, quietly watching the Tibetans. He looked as if about to speak, but seemed unable to find words. The Eluosi knelt and pulled the blanket over Gendun's shoulders. "I thought they were just old fools when I first met them," Marco confessed. "Now," he shook his head and looked into Shan's eyes and shrugged. "Sophie walked around them again and again when we found them, like she didn't recognize what type of creatures they might be. They wouldn't leave at first, and I wasn't sure what to do. I made as if to go, but Sophie went and sat with them. She wouldn't budge. She was ready for me to leave but she was going to stay with them." Marco scratched his head and creased his bushy eyebrows, as if still wondering about what his camel had done. "Then she heard a helicopter in the far distance and began pushing them toward me." He gazed at the two old men. "It's important they're here, isn't it?" he asked in a self-conscious tone. "I don't mean here, I mean… I don't know."
