He drained the cup, then clutched his stomach and convulsed, spitting up the brown liquid, looking about desperately before leaping toward the trash basket to spit up more. One of the guards laughed, the other barked a curse and stepped away from Shan. As he leaned into the basket he grabbed the wad of paper at the bottom and stuffed it down his shirt.
A moment later the door opened and Liang marched in. The guards darted to Shan and heaved him back into the chair. As Liang silently stepped behind him, his neck exploded in pain. Shan’s body was wracked in a convulsion that slammed his back into the metal chair, leaving him gasping.
“Excellent,” Liang declared as he paused at the opposite side of the table. “I have your attention.” In his hand was a small electronic taser device. The knobs had once preferred electronic cattle prods. They were keeping up with technical advances.
A guard dropped one of Shan’s little paper cranes in front of Liang. The major sighed. He picked up the crane, then carefully tore its wings and head off. A cool grin grew on his face as he tossed the remains of the bird at Shan, then made a show of increasing the intensity of the taser.
“You got yourself thrown into that reeducation camp to see someone,” Liang stated. “I think it was some of those nuns who knew the dead abbess. What do they know of the murders? Tell me now and we can be more gentle with them.”
Shan spoke first in Tibetan, watching the anger build in Liang’s face, then translated into Chinese. “Nuns are the messengers of the gods. Be careful what you ask them.”
Liang lifted the taser and paced along the table again. “In India I hear there used to be huge, unnaturally strong men who were kept by the rajas to conduct torture. They could twist a man’s head off. I read once how they would drive a spike into a man’s skull with their bare fists.” He lifted the little electronic box in his hand. “When I trained for this device,” he explained with a mock fascination in this voice, “they said it sent a spike of lightning into the flesh, said to be sure to only use it on muscle tissue.” Shan gripped the arms of the chair as Liang moved back around the table. “But I’ve always wondered if the skull could block lightning.”
The pain was like none Shan had ever known. His back arced, his eyes saw nothing but explosions of light. His body moved involuntarily, convulsing, slamming against the chair, then slamming his head against the table, pounding the table again and again. Tea and stomach acid dribbled down his chin. Liang laughed and pressed the instrument into his scalp again. The spike was in Shan’s brain, driving deeper and deeper.
Shan was surely dying. Surely no one could feel such pain and live. His hands on the arms of the chair jerked up and down. His skull was going to explode. The white-hot fire in his head ebbed and flared, ebbed and flared, as if someone kept blowing on its coals. His head slumped onto his chest. He was aware of nothing but the roar of his pain.
He jerked upright, moaning, as cold water was poured over him.
“We will talk about those nuns,” Liang growled.
Shan’s eyes had difficulty focusing. He made out Liang’s hand, adjusting the taser again. He thought of his son, and of Lokesh. This was the end. He was always going to die at the hands of some knob, he had just not known when.
“Anyone who aids that American bitch is a traitor to the motherland!” Liang snarled. “Anyone who-” His words choked away as the door was wrenched open.
A tall thin man with a hatchet face appeared, wearing the field uniform of a senior army officer, flanked by two rock-hard men in the fatigues of mountain commandos. The tall man grabbed the taser and threw it against the wall so hard it shattered.
As a guard moved to protect Liang, the officer gestured and one of his escorts flattened the man with a short, swift chop.
“My name is Colonel Tan,” the officer announced. “I am governor of Lhadrung County.” His voice was the low growl of a predator ready to spring.
Liang’s mouth moved but no one words came out.
Tan pointed to Shan. “That man is mine!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Tan ordered their car to stop when they crested the ridge that meant they were back in Lhadrung County. He gestured Shan out, then ordered his men to stay with the vehicle as they walked to a ledge that overlooked the valley.
Tan said nothing until he had lit a cigarette. “You’re a fucking mess. What did he do to you?”
Shan couldn’t stop the tremors in his hand. He stared at it a moment, then gripped it tightly with his other hand. “An experiment. He called it driving lightning into my skull.”
The colonel exhaled two sharp columns of smoke from his nostrils. “It has to do with the murders up here.”
“I don’t think they’ve been officially recognized as such.”
Tan ignored him. “With your unofficial meddling in these unofficial murders. Damn you, you can never leave things alone. It’s a Public Security matter. You know I have no authority.”
Shan recognized the ice in the colonel’s voice, knew the heat of his temper could burn hotter than any taser. He took an unsteady step and lowered himself onto a boulder. “A dead German. A missing American. If you are lucky you have maybe two or three weeks before foreigners are all over your county. First the embassies. Then the reporters.”
Tan inhaled deeply on his cigarette. “How many years does he have left?”
Shan’s heart sagged. Tan knew ways to torture him that Liang could never dream of. “Ten years. Ko has ten years left.”
“With one short message I could have him shipped to another prison. Manchuria. The Gobi. The jungle. If you started right away, you probably wouldn’t even locate him in ten years. But then you have no papers so you’d probably be picked up too.”
“I have the work papers you gave me.”
“Exactly. They would call my office. Everytime I hear your name I will have your son transferred again. When he’s released he will have no idea where you are. The two of you will grow old trying to find each other, wandering around China. Like one of those old tragic operas.”
Shan struggled to control his pain, and his despair. Liang would invent threats, just to intimidate those he questioned. Tan never made idle threats. He would do it. He would consider it his duty to do so. “The murders happened in Lhadrung County,” Shan said. “When the foreigners arrive, they will start with you.”
“We will not permit them to come.”
“You know those foreign reporters. They will just get in a car and start driving. Refuse them and they just get more persistent. You can’t imprison them. Turn one away and two come back. Someone will ask why the locals call the districts in the northern county Tan’s Hellhole. How many prisons do you have now? Ten? A dozen? They will discover your penal colony. Better hope some American politician is caught with a mistress that day, or you’ll be on every front page in the West.”
“Public Security knows how to deal with such things.”
“You of all people expect Public Security to find the truth?”
Tan frowned. “I said they would deal with it.”
“Liang is one of those who searches for the most convenient solution. You are familiar with the type if I am not mistaken.” The year before Shan had saved Tan from another overzealous knob who had jailed him for murder. Tan owed Shan his life, and hated Shan for it.
Tan gazed at him in silence, took a long draw on his cigarette, and flung the butt over the ledge. “I will leave you at the clinic in Baiyun. If you trouble me again I won’t even give you a chance to say good-bye to your son.”
* * *
The nurse who managed the clinic shook her head as she studied Shan’s hand. Every time she straightened his fingers they curled back, digging into his palm.