Soul of the Fire (26 page)

“Where?” Sung shouted.

As he regained his feet, Shan saw Sung's hand reach under his tunic to the small of his back, where he had no doubt concealed a pistol. Then the major hesitated, and his hand came away empty. Dawa was gone. The old lama was at the altar once more, reciting the Bardo. The only evidence Dawa had ever been there was the watch and the photo by the effigy.

“Where?” Sung repeated, grabbing Choi by the shoulder and shaking her. When the confused Choi offered no reply, he ran forward and seized the old lama. “Where?” Sung shrieked again. When the old man did not respond, Sung grabbed the old watch and slammed it against the stone wall. He threw the lama to the floor. “Where is the bitch?”

The lama looked not at Sung but toward the Buddha on the main altar.

Sung kicked the man, who groaned and held his belly but still said nothing. A second lama knelt and continued the recitation exactly where the first had left off. Sung kicked the second lama.

The first lama was on his knees now. He defiantly grabbed the inked effigy and held it over a butter lamp. As the paper began to curl and burn, he rose and laid it on the lap of the bronze Buddha. The lama was ending the service early rather than have Public Security forcibly shut it down.

The fury on Sung's face was a black storm. The major was coiling as if to pounce on the lama.

“On horses!” came a call from outside. One of Sung's men was waving from the wall now. “The sorcerer and the woman are galloping up the slope!”

Sung spun about and crashed through the crowd with an explosion of orders. The engines of the two nearest vehicles roared to life, but the cars did not move. The windshields were still covered with flour, and as the windshield washers switched on, the flour quickly turned to paste. Sung leapt into the first car screaming at his men to clean the glass. At the farthest of their vehicles, Hannah Oglesby was carefully wiping away the flour while it was still dry. She gestured Shan to the car as Judson slipped behind the wheel and started the engine. Shan climbed in, then followed Judson's frowning gaze to see Tuan and Chairman Choi close behind.

Judson ignored the frenzied urging of Choi and waited until Sung's vehicles finally roared out of the compound before putting their car into gear.

On the grassy slope above, half a mile away, two figures on horseback could be made out, headed toward the high pass that led into the labyrinth of Taktsang, the Tiger's Lair. The vehicles were much faster than the sturdy mountain horses, but they had to follow long tedious switchbacks up the broad, steep slope. Although a Public Security helicopter might easily have intercepted the fugitives, Shan doubted Sung had arranged for one—not because so many had been lost in these mountains, but because Sung would have wanted all the credit for apprehending the infamous dissident. That was how he would regain Pao's favor. It would be a close thing. If the fugitives could reach the pass before the knob vehicles, they would likely be able to lose themselves in the ragged landscape beyond.

At first Judson stayed close to the knobs, but the cloud of dust they raised obscured the narrow road, so the American eased off the accelerator. As the knobs slowed to round another curve, then sped up from the next leg, Shan realized with a sinking heart that Sung was going to win the race. He would reach the top with the
purbas
still in pistol range. The major would capture Dawa, piercing the heart of the dissident movement and saving his own career.

He watched as the riders reached the crest of the ridge and paused, looking back at their pursuers, oddly waiting for several long moments before prodding their mounts on. Moments later, the two black utility vehicles crested the ridge at high speed. When Shan and his companions reached the crest, the knobs were a quarter mile below them, climbing out of their cars.

They were in a narrow canyon, the lower slopes of which were covered with high grass and rock outcroppings. It was, Shan realized, the path into Taktsang. Along the steep rock walls on either side were painted mantras and warnings—some so old as to be unreadable, others very fresh. Several of the outcroppings were painted red, with more writing. These were homes of minor protector deities. The walls themselves, rising for several hundred feet, were splintered with crevasses and caves. Shan hoped the fugitives were losing themselves in that labyrinth, but as Judson coasted to a stop by the knobs, his heart sank. They had dismounted and left their horses only two hundred feet ahead of the knobs.

Sung and his men were scanning the slopes with binoculars. The major's hand was at his back, inside his jacket, but Shan saw he was hestitant about drawing his pistol. He snapped a command, and one of his men produced a megaphone from the back of one of their vehicles. “We are prepared to be lenient if you surrender now!” he shouted through the device.

A slender figure in a brown robe suddenly stood up on a flat outcropping only fifty yards away. Sung was gesturing his men to close on the figure when a second figure rose on an outcropping on the opposite side of the road. As they watched in confusion four more robed figures emerged from four more outcroppings, forming two rows flanking the road. Beside each figure stood a large pile of brush.

Sung looked back uneasily at the Americans then called for one of his men to herd them back into their car. His angry words died away as another knob pointed up the slope. Beside still another outcropping, stood a tripod and camera. The major hesitated, confused. It was, Shan realized, the camera from the funeral hall. As the knobs turned back toward the outcroppings along the road, two more figures appeared by the tripod. They were the ones who had fled on horses, and as Shan watched the woman lowered her hood. She had long black hair worn in two braids. It was not Dawa. Dawa was still at her father's funeral, now with no knobs to hound her.

Sung's pistol was in his hand now. He grabbed a pair of binoculars with his other hand and was raising them to his eyes when Madam Choi screamed. Brush had been removed from the nearest outcropping and the figure on it had burst into flames. To their horror, more immolations came. Each of the brush piles on the outcroppings had been swept aside and in quick succession flames shot up to consume each of the six figures. Judson began shooting photos with his phone then Sung leapt at him, knocking it from his hand.

“The camera!” one of the knobs shouted. The camera was now being operated by one of the Tibetans, aimed at the knobs and the fires.

Shan desperately ran toward the nearest blaze, Tuan and Judson at his heels, then slowed and stopped thirty feet away. The burning figures in the brush piles were giving off thick black smoke now, and a terrible acrid smell.

“Ta me da!”
Tuan cursed.

Sung began shouting in a high, desperate pitch, ordering his men to get the Commissioners off the mountain. Madam Choi began screaming again, but now her screams were of anger.

Judson began to laugh.

A knob fired a pistol into the air. Sung did not move.

Shan had seen many Public Security officers explode in fury, had often seen them lash out with hatred and violence. In all his years, he had never seen one with the look of shocked, eviscerating defeat that Sung now wore as he grasped the scene that was being filmed, with the major as its centerpiece.

Arrayed before them, in two neat lines along the road, six fiberglass statues of Chairman Mao were being immolated.

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Major Sung waited for Shan at a bend in the road. His driver eased their car to a stop, gestured Shan out, then let all the others from Sung's car climb in before driving on to Zhongje. They were at a cliff that overlooked miles of rolling, shadowed grasslands, with Zhongje a dusty smudge on the horizon.

“Are you going to jump, Major?” Shan asked. “Or just push me off.”

“They are enemies of the state,” Sung hissed.

“Who now have a film that will shame Beijing and destroy your career. When they post it on the Internet, it will get a million views. If it gets past Beijing's filters, it will get a hundred million. ‘Hits' they call them. As in you've been hit.”

“I've been shot in the fucking heart!” Sung spat.

“It was only your profile on the film. Maybe only Public Security will recognize you.”

Sung lit a cigarette and stepped to the very edge of the high cliff. His fury had a forlorn, helpless aspect.

“But if they meant to use it publicly, you'd already be getting calls.”

Sung seemed not to hear. He inhaled deeply on his cigarette, then blew out twin plumes from his nostrils. He finally turned. “What do you mean?”

“If they were trying to use the film to inflict the greatest damage to Beijing, they would have released it immediately, for fear censoring measures would be activated. Public Security isn't above blocking all cell transmissions in Tibet. This is personal.”

“Personal?”

“A negotiation, Major.”

“Nonsense. This was just a pack of Tibetan hooligans.”

Shan said nothing. The cars on the highway below began switching on headlights. A flock of geese honked high overhead.

“Negotiation for what?”

“Let me go see.”

“You?”

“Give me a truck. I want Lokesh and two women from the stable who know Taktsang. Release them to me, no questions asked.”

“The negotiation already begins.”

“This is not negotiable. Give me three days. Say the Commission has to catch up on paperwork. No soldiers, no Public Security. Try to use a tracking device, and we will find it and destroy it.”

Sung nursed his cigarette. He knew his career was in ruins. When he finally spoke, it was toward the darkening sky. “If Pao finds out…” he began, then turned to Shan. “Tuan has to go.”

Shan took a long time to answer. “You mean as cover. So you can say the two of you saw a chance to secretly infiltrate the lair of the
purbas
and took it.” He shook his head. “I could never protect him.”

Sung's grin was colder than the wind.

“At least give him the choice,” Shan said.

“I can't order him to, but he will go. I could get lucky,” Sung observed. “They could kill you both.” The major walked along the edge of the cliff and looked at his cell phone. If the purbas had released the footage his career would be over with one short call. “It makes no sense. I would destroy them in a heartbeat. Why don't they just destroy me?”

Shan now noticed the uneasy glances Sung cast toward the car and stepped closer to the black vehicle. A large tombstone-shaped piece of paper—one end square and one round—lay on the dashboard.

“It was just draped on the wheel when I got back in the car up there.” Sung's voice was almost a whisper. “The same paper the burnt ones use for their verses.”

Shan swung the door open and sat, using the overhead light to examine the heavy paper. It was covered with Tibetan writing and symbols. In the center was a crudely drawn human figure, obviously male, standing in a triangle, which itself was enclosed by another larger triangle. In the space between the triangles were drawings of an ax, an arrow, a bow, a spear, a sword, and a hook. Arrayed along the outer edges were images of clouds, lotus flowers, and flames.

Sung appeared at his shoulder. “It's called a
lingam,
” Shan explained. “A curse, a charm aimed at the destruction of the person depicted in the center.”

“You mean me.”

“No.” Shan pointed at the Tibetan letters under the little man. “It still has to be empowered. There's a space at the bottom for you to sign, to empower it.” Shan turned to Sung. “It is an invitation, Major. This is the trade they want.”

“I don't make deals with traitors.”

“They offer to save you from both the disasters that await you.”

“Both disasters?”

“They will save you from the destruction of your career by keeping the video of you with the burning Maos to themselves. They want you to sign this, and have me deliver it to them, to save you from the one who will otherwise kill you. Your mutual enemy.” This time he pointed to the Tibetan letters over the effigy figure. “This charm is for the destruction of Emperor Pao.”

*   *   *

Shan drove the old truck Sung had lent them over the high ridge above Shetok, then slowed as they approached the mounds of melted plastic that marked where the Maos had burned. Lokesh insisted on climbing out, then he ran to the first of the rocks with an energy that astonished Shan. The old man dropped to his knees on the flat outcropping and stretched his arms out, as he spoke toward the sky. When Shan and Tuan, with Yosen and Pema close behind, reached him, he was pointing at the other lumps of plastic and counting.

“Five, six!” he concluded, then looked up to see Shan's confused expression.

“I dreamt this, Shan!” he exclaimed. “In the prison, I started having dreams like never before, after my dream led me to uncover that old mandala. First of my parents, then of my wife. Later it was of the Dalai Lama when I knew him as a boy, then of the next Dalai Lama in the arms of his mother. After a few nights, it was of the old lamas who died in our barracks at the 404th. It was so real. I thought they were ghosts who had come to visit. We spoke for hours. Once one just sat before me and recited the Diamond Sutra. Another came and told me all about the pure land. He said soon I would see for myself its jeweled trees and fragrant rivers.”

“Lha gyal lo!”
The excited blessing came from Pema as she hurried to explore the other burnt rocks with Yosen. The two nuns and Lokesh had been waiting for Shan at dawn in the municipal equipment yard, sitting in a solitary utility vehicle driven by Sung. They were clearly fearful of the major, and had run to Shan, eyes round with surprise, when the major opened the doors.

Shan looked at his friend with new worry. The pure land was the home of the sainted dead.