He pressed his fist tightly against his forehead, as if he could force out the pain that was rising inside.
“Whatever Jamyang may have been is just a distraction, Shan,” Meng said. “We have murders to solve.”
He met her worried, earnest gaze, knowing that she had taken a grave risk by venturing into the inner offices of the Institute.
A movement at the corner of the building caught Shan’s eye. Jigten, who had been napping in the cab of the truck, was walking toward the stable. As he reached the entry he picked up a pitchfork leaning against the wall. Shan gasped and leapt up, running to the stable.
“This will end!” he shouted as he grabbed the pitchfork from the shepherd.
“When there is justice for the boy it will end!” Jigten snapped. The eyes of the wiry dropka held the same wild gleam Shan had seen when he had first cornered him in Baiyun. Shan paused, not sure if he had heard correctly. “The boy?”
“Lung Wi. He was my friend. He died because of this one!”
“Surely you are mistaken, Jigten. Surely you can’t know that.”
“I know! It’s why I made sure Genghis didn’t drive. I heard you say this bastard was in Chamdo.”
Dakpo had pushed himself against the wall, his face twisted in pain and fear. Meng appeared as Shan stepped in front of the monk, facing Jigten.
“You are wrong, Jigten. I didn’t say it was Dakpo. And this is Tibet. Monks don’t kill.”
The shepherd greeted the words with a sneer. “This is Chinese Tibet. Everything is backward,” he said, and gestured to Shan and Meng as if they somehow proved his point.
“Real monks don’t kill,” Shan amended, and pointed Jigten to a milking stool. “Sit down. Tell me about the boy.”
The shepherd muttered a curse, still glaring at Dakpo, but complied. The Jade Crows had laughed when Jigten had first appeared, he explained, asking if he could help with their trucks. But he had persisted, coming back to the garage again and again, cleaning up, washing trucks, letting them treat him like their slave. The son of the gang’s chieftan had taken to lingering in the garage when the others left, and began to take him for rides in the trucks. They had discovered they were only a few years apart in age, discovered a like interest in mahjong and the mechanics of the truck motors. Before long the boy was teaching Jigten how to drive.
“Sometimes we would sneak away and shoot at marmots with his slingshot. That’s what happened the day his father told him to drive the small truck to meet with someone, to deliver a message. He picked me up on the other side of the hill and we raced over the road, bouncing in the ruts, laughing. He liked to pretend he was running away from the police, like in some movie. We got to his meeting place early and walked up the ridge to shoot at marmots. We were stalking a big one through some rocks when over the rise we saw two men on the dirt road below. One was a knob and the other was a monk with a bicycle.
“I backed away, and told him to hide but he said it was no problem, that the monk was the one he was doing business with and he stood up and waved at the monk.”
Shan shut his eyes a moment. “Genghis was suddenly sick. You did that.”
“There’s a little red root that grows up on the ridges. I put some in his tea. He’s fine by now.”
“But why wait all this time?” Meng asked.
“Because he didn’t know that the boy was murdered,” Shan said heavily. “Not until he eavesdropped on Lung Tso and me.”
“A monk did the killing you said. I saw that monk with the bicycle. I went back there,” Jigten explained. “I went back to see if I could find something more about that monk and the knob.” Jigten pointed at Dakpo. “And I saw him there, on the bicycle again.”
Dakpo murmured something, holding his ribs.
Shan stepped closer. “I’m sorry?”
“There’s a dozen.” The monk’s mouth twisted in pain as he spoke. “The gompa has a dozen bicycles. Any monk can take one when he needs it. I borrowed one to go back along that trail where the Lung boy died.”
“To do what?”
Dakpo gazed at Jigten. “To find something more about that monk and the knob,” he said, repeating the dropka’s words.
“It was you I saw that day at the convent,” Shan said.
The young monk nodded. “I know Chenmo.”
Shan considered his words. “You mean she told you a monk was a killer, because the American had told her.”
Dakpo grabbed the gau around his neck and nodded again. “I found a gun,” he whispered, glancing fearfully at Meng. Shan looked up at her and she nodded and left the building. “Tell me about it,” he said.
It had been hidden inside a prayer wheel on a pilgrim path that was seldom used, the monk explained. But Jamyang had convinced him that all such paths needed clearing, and Dakpo went up the slope to do so whenever he could get away. “The wheel made a terrible clatter when I finally got it moving. I pushed on it, and the top came off. I didn’t want to touch it.”
“What happened to it?”
“I didn’t do anything that day, nothing until Chenmo told me what the American said about the killer. Then I went up in the night and threw it into a crevasse.”
“But why go to Chamdo so abruptly?” Shan asked.
“I clean out files all the time in the office at the monastery, because of the auditors who come. I found a message from weeks ago with nothing but a date on it, the date of the full moon next week. It had been sent electronically to an address that said CTPI, with numbers after those letters like a code. The Bureau of Religious Affairs has been trying to train us to use computers better. I was able to investigate on the computer and found the message had been sent to the Institute.” There was fear in the monk’s voice now. “I had never heard of it. I had to find out what it meant, why it was sent.”
In the silence that followed more trucks went by, groaning with full loads. “Tell me this, Dakpo,” Shan asked, “who at Chegar does business with the Jade Crows? Who works with the purbas?”
Dakpo would not look at Shan. He gripped his gau tighter. “There are three of us,” he said in a hollow voice.
“Who other than you? The purbas knew of the foreigners. Did they tell you about them?”
“There are three of us,” Dakpo repeated, and would say no more.
* * *
It was nearly midnight before he lowered himself onto a pile of straw opposite Dakpo. Much later he woke to the sound of straining engines. He did not have to rise to know from the repetitive movement of headlights across the back wall that another convoy was passing by. Beside him on the straw was Meng, asleep, nestled against his body.
He turned and through the open door could see the trucks, at least twenty, climbing up the mountain pass. It was another prisoner convoy, curling around the mountain like a serpent. The demon that was eating Tibet.
Meng rolled over, resting her hand on his chest. She had put her tunic on against the chill air and the red enamel star on its collar caught the moonlight. The demon he slept with.
* * *
The moon had risen when he stirred again, then abruptly sat up. Jigten sat on the stool staring at Dakpo, asleep on the straw.
The shepherd felt Shan’s gaze. “I will take him to Lung Tso. Lung will make him tell us about the killer.”
“I don’t think he knows. There are three, he said. It’s why he went to Chamdo, to try to discover why one of the others would be communicating with the Institute.”