“Only the beginning of the end,” Shan said. “Those knots are still untied.”
Ani Ama replied with a somber nod. She studied the hills for a long moment as if searching for a sign of the dead abbess. “We can’t just walk out of this place,” she said, a hint of invitation in her voice.
“No,” Shan agreed. He looked back at the shrouded body. “First you have to die.”
* * *
The guards escorting the burial detail wanted nothing to do with the bodies. They kept their distance, watching with revulsion as Shan and half a dozen others loaded the dead onto the wheelbarrows, then opening the back gate and quickly stepping aside. The dead were infected with disease.
Lokesh had explained that sometimes as many as half a dozen were dying each night. Shan, pushing the last handcart, gave silent thanks that there had been only two deaths that particular night, so that adding three more bodies had not attracted notice. He nervously watched the pair of guards pause to light cigarettes and looked back toward the little warehouse where Lung’s trucks were due. He breathed a sigh of relief as one of the guards split away toward the tractor that was used to push earth into the trench. Shan saw the blur of dust that signaled the arrival of Lung’s trucks. Then suddenly the second guard lifted his baton and thumped it down on the first body. Shan’s heart leapt as the guard approached the second.
“The organs of state must practice democratic centralism!” Shan suddenly shouted as the guard took a step toward the second cart, then darted forward with his cart toward the pit. “Today is chapter seventeen! Quickly! We forgot there is an early review session of Chairman Mao’s Quotations! We cannot shame the Great Helmsman!” He mouthed a prayer, then hastily pitched his barrow sideways, letting the body he carried roll into the pit. He expected the guard to aim his baton at him, but the few moments of hesitation caused by Shan’s outcry had been enough. The man cocked his head toward the road. Lung’s trucks were at the warehouse, and someone was frantically shouting from the loading dock. Then suddenly Shan saw the movement on the road. A grey utility vehicle was speeding toward the camp, its red lights flashing. The knobs were coming, the knobs who hated to dirty their hands with the business of the People’s Armed Police.
With a sinking heart he watched the knob’s car slide to a stop at the front gate. In desperation his gaze shifted back and forth from the knobs climbing out of the vehicle to the warehouse. Dark smoke began pouring out of the engine compartment of the nearest truck. The men at the warehouse shouted, even louder, pointing at the truck, and were running away from it as it suddenly burst into flames.
The guard near Shan shouted for the other prisoners to dump their shrouded loads as the second guard, on the tractor, leapt off the vehicle and ran toward the fire. Shan gestured urgently to his companions, who emptied their carts, dumping the shrouds containing Cora, Ani Ama, and Lokesh onto the ground by sheltering rocks. The three rolled quickly away, pushing off the shrouds, and disappearing into the rocks as Shan threw the shrouds into the pit. The Tibetan who had carried the bucket of lime emptied it into the pit, then took Shan’s cart as planned and headed back toward the gate. But Shan stood frozen, watching as the three scrambled out around the nearby outcroppings. He heard Lokesh’s urgent whisper, calling him to join them as they had planned. Shan looked back at the knobs. He knew why they were there, knew that if he were missing when they searched for him in the camp that the hills would soon be crawling with troops.
“Lha gyal lo,” he called in a low voice to the three who watched from the rocks, pointing toward the high ground, then he turned and marched back to the gate.
* * *
Major Liang was standing at the window in the interrogation room at the Public Security district headquarters when Shan was shoved inside. He glared at Shan, crushed out his cigarette, took two steps, and slapped Shan in the face with the back of his hand.
“You think you can mock me!” he shouted. “You think you can interfere with my investigation without my knowing! By the time I am done with you, you will be begging for the bullet I will put in your head!”
Shan lowered himself into a chair at the table and stared out the window.
“You have a hard-labor tattoo on your arm,” Liang said to his back. “Do you know how few of those are seen in the reeducation camps? Those who survive hard labor are usually model citizens. If a number shows up in the camps a message is sent to Public Security for follow-up. Except no one can follow up your number. Impossible, I said, there has to be a record. I searched the data myself. It’s a Lhadrung registration number but Lhadrung has no record of you. An empty file. When I did a broader search I came up with a famous investigator from Beijing with the same name who disappeared years ago. The only real entry shows you as a ditch inspector for Lhadrung County. A ditch inspector who impersonates a senior investigator. Did you kill the real Shan, the one from Beijing?”
When Shan did not reply Liang stepped to the opposite side of the table and slammed his fist on it. “You’re not a mere criminal! You showed your true colors when you attacked that statue in the park. You are a traitor. You mock the motherland! You shame the motherland!”
Shan kept staring at the unfamiliar landscape out the window. The headquarters complex was in a crossroads village miles north of Lhadrung County. “There are three hundred forty miles of ditches in my district,” he declared as Liang paced around the table. “I keep the water flowing by removing mud and trash. You’d be surprised how big a job it is.”
His only warning was a blur of movement at the corner of his eye. The blow slammed into his cheek with a sharp stinging pain. Liang reappeared at the other side of the table, holding a wooden ruler.
“Who took the bodies?” Liang demanded.
“They did you a favor, Major. The political construct of murder can raise so many dilemmas. With no bodies there can be no murders.”
Liang slammed the ruler down again, this time on the back of Shan’s hand. “Who took the bodies?” he repeated, his voice shrill now.
Shan blinked away the pain. “I forgot. You have the third body still, the most troublesome one. But you have a plan for that one. A climbing accident. Or is it to be an unfortunate car crash in the mountains? Better have the car explode so you can report the body was destroyed. It might seem negligent to lose a foreigner’s face.”
Liang’s anger was like an evil creature twisting inside him. The knob officer seemed to squirm, his mouth twisting into a snarl, his hands folding and unfolding into fists. He dropped into the chair opposite Shan and opened a shallow drawer. “Do you have any idea what this is?” he growled as he extracted a printed sheet of paper.
A shudder passed through Shan as he recognized the form. An order for imprisonment. He did not reply.
“As a senior Public Security officer I can send you away for a year without any further authority. No messy hearings. No appeal. I have a favorite prison in the Taklamakan Desert where they keep a few bunks reserved for me to fill. So cold in the winter a man can lose an entire foot to frostbite in one night. The sand gets so hot in the summer you can get blisters through your shoes. Last year’s mortality rate was nearly twenty-five percent. It will be months before anyone even knows where you are. When your year is up the warden will tell me and I will destroy the original order and I will issue a new one for another prison. And the year after that and the year after that. Every year my new signature. Until I retire. But you won’t last that long.”
Liang lit a cigarette as he let his words sink in. “You have one night to think it over. I’ll instruct them to give you a notepad. Write down everything you know and we can forget the desert. You’ll have to be punished for what you did to that statue but I’ll just turn you over to the Armed Police for that. You know the system. Have a political epiphany. Confess your sins. Lead a Tibetan choir that sings Party anthems. You could be out in a few months.”