Thriving on Chaos
, one said. The momentos were mostly familiar political tokens. A bust of Mao tse Tung. A piece of wood into which the words
Persist Unswervingly
had been carved, an abbreviation for a favorite motto of a past decade. Two cigarette lighters mounted in polished stone with brass plates noting Party conferences. Several pen and pencil sets. And a string of dingy plastic beads. Shan picked them up. A mala. Remembering that the demon who killed Alta had taken the boy's rosary, Shan put the beads in his pocket.
There were no lists of boys' names with calculation of bounties. There were no notes on Lau. On the wall was a photograph of Ko standing under a banner announcing the Poverty Eradication Scheme, shaking hands with a nearly bald man with a thin, hatchet-like face. Shan studied the man. On his suit coat was a large pin in the shape of the Chinese flag, with a battle tank underneath it. A memento for retired soldiers.
Shan wandered back to the secretary's desk. On it was a large envelope, return address Brigade headquarters in Urumqi, with Ko's name scrawled on it. Below Ko's name was a note.
I wish all my managers understood the new Chinese economy as well as you, comrade. This will be our model project to explain what a market economy with Chinese characteristics really is.
It was signed
Rongqi.
Inside the envelope Shan found a glossy label bearing an image of mountains and the Potala in Lhasa, the traditional home of the Dalai Lama, now converted by Beijing to a tourist shrine. Superimposed over the image was the word
Oracle
, with a trademark symbol.
Fresh from the sacred spring
, it said underneath and then, at the bottom,
ten ounces.
On the side panels were more marketing words.
Healing. Fortifying. Better Dreams. Taste the magic of Tibet.
Shan stared at it in confusion at first, but then he read the cover note again, and his throat went dry. The oracle lake at the Raven's Nest. The Poverty Eradication Scheme. Rongqi's hatred of the Tibetans. The assimilation of lost minorities into the economic process. The subversion of the Yakde Lama. Ko and his general had found the perfect project. The model for their new economy. Distribute the sacred waters of the Raven's Nest to the newly affluent Chinese of the eastern cities. Rongqi was a man who evolved with the economy, but not all the way. He would have his vengeance on the Yakde Lama, paying rich rewards for the boy's death and also for the Jade Basket, even annoint his own Yakde Lama, then he would rub his victory in the faces of the lama's survivors.
Shan's hand trembled as he lifted the simulated label that covered a series of index cards.
Suggested marketing slogans
, someone had ambitiously penned on the first card.
Print image: sexy woman in a nightshirt
, it said.
Caption: "Psst! I've got a Tibetan sex secret for you!"
The second said,
Print image: Monk raising a bottle with a big smile. Caption: "In Tibet we say, lha gyal lo! Victory to the gods. Now I say Victory to you!"
There was more, but Shan could not bear to read them.
Suddenly horns blared from the vehicles at the baseball game. Shan dropped the envelope and pushed Lokesh toward the door. "Don't run," he said urgently. Don't look Tibetan, he almost said. He grabbed a heavy coat hanging on the back of the door and a baseball bat leaning in the corner. He threw the coat at Lokesh, who slipped it on, pulling its hood over his head. They walked down the hall, past the smiling janitor watching the desk, Shan in the lead with the bat on his shoulder. The woman waved goodbye. As they reached the door a group of men entered, a tall big-shouldered one in the center boisterously speaking of the game they had just played. Shan glanced at him and quickly looked away, then slowed to listen to the man's deep voice again. As he passed the man and exited the building Shan realized he had seen him before, wearing a white shirt that glared in the night, standing on the road in the Kunlun mountains.
Twenty minutes later they were in the cellar of the Maos' restaurant, Lokesh grinning as he offered the coat to the Mao's wardrobe. He paused to point out the gloves and hat in the pocket and the rich lining inside, synthetic fur in the pattern of a leopard. Shan smiled at his friend, feeling in debt to the deities who protected the old Tibetan, then began explaining to the Maos what he had learned. Wangtu, slumped in a chair in the corner, sat up and listened.
Moments later Lokesh called out in a somber tone. Shan turned and looked at him with a puzzled expression. The coat was reversible. Lokesh had put it on, leopard skin out, brown gloves on, a brown balaclava over his face, showing only eyes and mouth. He was holding the baseball bat, not as a batter would, but in one hand, raised over his shoulder. In his other hand was a long thin object which Fat Mao took for inspection. The Uighur pressed a button on its side and with a loud click a long blade appeared. A switchblade.
Shan gasped and stood as he realized what Lokesh had discovered. The demon in leopard form that had attacked the boy with the dropkas. The demon without a face. The demon had paws, and a shiny stick like a man's arm, the woman had said, without the fingers. He looked at the bat, wide at the top and ending like a wrist at the bottom. Jowa groaned loudly and turned to Shan with a look of shocked understanding. The boy had met the demon in mere leopard form. But Shan had to deal with the demon in Ko form.
Shan turned to Wangtu and studied the sullen Kazakh. "You have to make it happen," he said with a glance to Fat Mao, "you have to get the lie to Xu." He quickly explained what he had to do, then called the prosecutor's office from the pay phone at the post office, three blocks away, with Ox Mao listening. He asked for Miss Loshi and left a message with the secretary saying he was going to the town square, where he wanted to meet Prosecutor Xu with important information about Director Ko. A minute later Ox Mao left with a message to give to the bald man in the lobby, as Fat Mao gave hurried instructions to the others.
The sirens started five minutes later as the knobs converged on the square. Had Loshi bothered to call Ko first, Shan wondered, or had she contacted Bao directly? Ox Mao was behind the Ministry palace by then, watching the Red Flag limousine. Swallow Mao, the shy Uighur woman, stood in an alley a block away, where she could see Ox Mao. Jowa sat on a bench on the street opposite Shan, where he could see Swallow Mao. The signal came quickly. Jowa dropped the paper he was reading and raised both arms as if stretching. Shan stood, walking slowly, until he saw the shadow of the big car in the alley and stepped in front of it.
No one spoke as he climbed inside. The bald man drove fast, out of town, as Xu looked out the window, her eyes restlessly surveying the streets. Five minutes later they pulled onto a rocky track and climbed to the top of a small hill. They were at the edge of the desert, looking west toward the late afternoon sun. Xu silently walked to the edge of the knoll and down the other side. Shan followed, and found a short set of wooden stairs in severe disrepair. At the bottom Prosecutor Xu sat on a decrepit bench, beside a sign that leaned against the wooden post it had apparently fallen from. It had the flowing script of the Turkic language, but no Chinese.
"The old Muslim cemetery," she said, looking out over row upon row of identical sunbaked tombs, long cylindrical mounds of mud and cement, curving to a slight point along the top ridge. The scene gave the impression of scores of columns from a temple that had been toppled in symmetrical rows. Here and there were small beehive shapes of baked mud, the home, Shan suspected, of cremated remains and several large beehives, where bodies were buried sitting upright with their knees folded against their chests.
He quickly explained about the evidence linking Ko to the attack on the dropka boy.
"Circumstantial," she said.
"Ko must have been in a Brigade truck in Tibet with others that day, just like the next night when we saw them. It shouldn't be hard to find some of those who were with him. You could interrogate them. Get statements. It's one of your specialities, I hear."
She did not rise to his bait. "Bao found Lau's body," she said instead. Shan's head snapped up. "Or said he did. So we called, said an autopsy should be done. He said the Bureau already did one, confirming drowning was the cause. Body was cremated in Kotian."
"The body?"
"He had a body. But he didn't know my office uses the crematorium in Kotian too. We called, and the technician said the job had been delayed, that they were just about to start. I said we needed one last check of the woman's identity, and he called back five minutes later, all upset. Wasn't a woman at all. It was a young man, and he hadn't drowned, he had been shot twice in the chest. Mistakes happen I said, just put him away in the morgue. We'll be in touch."
"Lieutenant Sui." Shan spoke toward the graves, as if their occupants deserved to know.
The prosecutor nodded. "It's a strange sort of coverup. If Bao shot Sui he would have been more careful, there would have been no body. He's cleaning up someone else's mess. Someone he won't prosecute."
"Ko. Ko shot Sui. I met a witness. Bao found out, and Ko gave him his car to quiet him. Now they're business partners, thanks to Rongqi. Bao is protecting Ko, at least for now."
"Ridiculous. Bao and Ko, they're totally different. Never been friends. I've known them ever since they arrived in Yoktian."
"I saw a banner for the Poverty Eradication Scheme," Shan said. "Unify for Economic Success. I think Rongqi created a bond between them, a mutual interest."
"Like finding your boy lama?" Xu asked in a skeptical tone. "You're talking about the Brigade, one of the biggest companies in China, and the Public Security Bureau."
"No. Not the Bureau, just two renegade officers. Sui hid what he was doing from Bao. Sui killed Lau and got a lead on Ko in trying to find the boy. Ko killed him, because Sui was getting too close to the big prize. Then, later, when Bao discovered what had happened, he stepped into Sui's role. Unify to maximize the bounties. They can collect more if they work together. Rongqi increased the prize, too much to ignore for someone like Bao, stuck in Yoktian on a knob's salary. Creating a false record in the Lau investigation, that would be nothing for someone who kills boys for money," Shan sighed wearily. "Arrest them both. You'll be a hero."
Xu grimaced. "There's still no hard evidence."
"A body in the morgue is a good start. And there's a witness to Sui's murder, hiding in the mountains." Shan studied her. "You just mean there is no political explanation."
Xu was silent, looking out over the field of tombs. The wind blew sand in drifts along the rows of graves.
"Corruption is political," Shan suggested. "Bring down Rongqi, and you can get out of Xinjiang."
She made her grimace again. "I need books. I need ledgers. I need evidence. Offering economic incentives with private money, that's no crime."
"Offering a bounty to kill a boy is."
Xu shook her head. "One word from Rongqi to a boot squad and we can all wind up in lao gai. You don't possibly think I could touch the general."
Shan stared at her. Her eyes remained as hard as pebbles but she would not meet his gaze. "I think you can. I think you're just scared."
"Sure. Next he'll have a bounty on uncooperative prosecutors."
"No. You're not scared of Rongqi. I think there is only one thing that truly scares you." She looked at him. "I think you're scared of becoming me."
The sound that Xu made seemed to start as a laugh, but ended more as a whimper.
"It's possible to stand up to them," he continued. "But if you do, it's also possible to end like me." He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, as if speaking of some strange lower life form, not of himself.
She stood and abruptly walked away, down a row of tombs. The wind picked up as the sun began to sink behind the mountains. It shifted and filled with the acrid smell of the ephedra bushes that grew along the desert fringe. It was cool, almost cold, a sign of a shift in seasons.
He followed, but not all the way to her, stopping six feet away to bend at a grave. He began clearing away the dead leaves that had gathered against its wall. One of the traditions lost to most modern Chinese was Chen Ming, the festival when one swept the graves of ancestors and placed a branch of willow over the door to ward off evil spirits. When the government outlawed graves, it had effectively outlawed the festival day. Once Shan had found his father trying to fasten a tiny willow twig to the frame of their door, and his father had made an awkward joke about it and walked away. But in the night the twig had appeared over the door.
"You are going to get a report of a crime in the next few hours," he said in a loud voice as he worked. "Bao arranged it. Someone will say another boy has been attacked, maybe even killed. In the mountains. The kind of call the prosecutor's office must respond to. You will need to go immediately, or in the morning, early."
Xu gave no sign of having heard. She wandered away. A few minutes later she appeared on the other side of the tomb where Shan worked. "You mean a trap?"
"A distraction, I think. Because tomorrow morning is when Bao and Ko plan to catch the last boy. The one with the Jade Basket. It's timed perfectly for the general's visit. The big prize at last, presented to him when he arrives."
