“This is different,” he replied.
When she looked up, her expression had become somber. “Is that why I feel we need to be outside if we’re going to talk more about killers?”
Shan stared at her, confused, as she stepped away. Then he realized she meant outside the convent, outside the sacred ground.
Five minutes later she unfolded a map on the hood of her car.
“The mystery of the murders is really just the mystery of Jamyang,” she said. “I have been thinking about that, about how he got here. He was seen on the Lhasa highway. He was going to Drepung, by Lhasa. Hundreds of monks. Thousands of tourists. A likely place for a graduate of the Peace Institute. But after he saw his aunt he hated himself, hated what he had been turned into.”
She ran her fingers along the map to the east and north. “Maybe he was trying to find a way to go home, back to the mountains of his youth. To do penance.”
“He was doing his penance here,” Shan suggested.
“A route home would take him through Lhadrung. There are buses that run to Baiyun once a week. He could have ridden there and started walking.”
Shan bent over the map beside her. “He couldn’t risk being stopped by police. The constant convoys and patrols would have driven him up into the hills,” he added. It was the likely explanation for Jamyang’s arrival on the upper slopes. “He was broken. He just wanted a place to crawl into and hide, where he could begin to heal, to construct a new life, the one his uncle had intended for him. He would never have known about another Institute graduate being assigned to a mission in the valley.”
“Of course not. Every assignment would be secret, the agents unknown to one another. But we don’t know for certain there was another agent here.”
She was trying so hard not to understand. He gazed at her a moment, then pointed to the map. “And what direction did Liang come from?” he asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s always the most obvious things that are overlooked in an investigation. You need to find out when Liang arrived at your district headquarters.”
“Right after the murders were reported of course.”
“No, Meng. He was at the murder scene with the first party of police to arrive. You and I saw him. He was already in the district. His role as some larger-than-life investigator is a cover.”
“Nonsense. Liang is just the son of a bitch thug he appears to be.”
“Check it. You’re going to find he arrived a day or two after Jamyang used a computer in Baiyun to access the Institute’s database. It would have been a week before the murders.”
Meng went very still.
“He only cares about the murders because his agent is connected to them, and they set into motion events that could threaten that agent’s mission. What sent him running to this valley was that threat, not the murders. He’s not interested in finding a killer, he is interested in finding the American woman, he’s interested in me, and anyone interfering with the mission. You said it yourself. These agents can take years to prepare. The investment in such an agent is huge. Nothing can be allowed to interfere. Liang is a handler, a field troubleshooter for the Institute. No doubt he was once a special investigator for the Bureau. But like he told us, he was promoted. He knew how to go through the motions, knew he had to react when the bodies were stolen. It was perfect pretense for him because he also had to make sure no one else investigated thoroughly.
“You were the only knob truly probing the murders. He gave you free rein. He used you because he never thought you were capable of finding the truth. You became part of his cover. What he does is the opposite of an investigation. He knew who the killer was from the beginning. He knew the evidence, and set about to erase or obscure it. He never had tests done on that bullet, he just wanted to be sure no one else did. He wanted you to believe he was seeking the American because she might be a witness but he wanted to find her so he could kill her. From the moment he arrived everything he has done has been to protect the killer.”
Meng staggered backward as if she had been physically struck. She lowered herself onto a flat boulder. “Impossible,” she said. “I would have-”
“Would have seen it? Been told? Avoided helping him? It’s what he does, Meng, what they do. Manipulate people like you and me. Cover up. Enlist you to build the lies.”
The color was slowly draining from Meng’s face. “I don’t believe you, Shan. You mistrust everything. You mistrust yourself. I understand you had a terrible experience. It was all so unjust. But you see poison everywhere now. I tried to give you a gift and you hated me for it. Like I had something to do with what happens to these poor Tibetans.”
He returned her stare without speaking. When she broke away, tears were in her eyes.
“Check the records,” he said. “Speak to people at headquarters. The arrival of Major Liang would not have been missed. There’s no doubt a house for government visitors. They would keep records of who stays overnight. If you can’t find the records talk to the housekeepers.”
She turned away from him. He waited several minutes, then began walking down the road.
He had gone nearly a mile when he heard the wheels on the gravel behind him. The truck eased by and stopped.
She began shouting before her feet hit the ground. “You think I am just another damned puppet! You think I don’t care about anything!” As she pulled her uniform cap from her head hairpins went flying, so that her long tresses whipped about in the wind. She shook the cap at him. “I am tired of your damned self-righteousness! You think no one can see the truth unless they’ve suffered for it!” She threw her cap on the ground and stomped it into the dust.
Her words came out in sobs now “I am no puppet, Shan Tao Yun! I hate the way Tibetans look at me! I am no animal! I am real! I am-” Tears were streaming down her face. “I just want…” Her words broke into sobs.
He laid a finger along his lips, then put his arms around her. She clung to him as if she were drowning. From somewhere in the hills behind them came the deep-throated call of a prayer horn.
* * *
Dawn was seeping over the mountains as Shan crept cautiously along the path behind the gompa. When he had taken Dakpo back to Chegar the monk had asked to be left with Patrul, saying he did not wish to disturb the gompa at such a late hour. Only later he realized it was more likely that Dakpo feared going back into the monastery. He could not shake the feeling that he owed the monk more, and could not forget he had only two days until the full moon.
The former abbot was sitting before his simple altar in the big barn when Shan approached. Shan was standing ten feet away when the blind man raised a hand over his shoulder and gestured for him to come forward and sit.
“It was good what you did for Dakpo,” Patrul said. “You have a habit of rescuing creatures in distress.”
“With Dakpo, Rinpoche, I am not sure if I rescued him or pulled him deeper into the mud.”
“He is young but he has learned enough to know there is no purity without impurity.”
“I would like to find a way to speak with him. Did he find his way back to the gompa?”
The old teacher shook his head. “He fears what he would do to it.”
Shan turned for a moment to look at the storerooms along the corridor of the long barn, then weighed Patrul’s words. “What he might do to it?”
“I think you understand how the truth is the most painful weapon of all. The truth you armed him with would devastate the monks.”
Shan gazed up at the Buddha on the makeshift altar. He was the blind man here. He knew how much the monks of the struggling gompa revered their abbot. Norbu was their hero, their savior. Norbu had resurrected Patrul out of the oblivion of the gulag. To tell them the truth would be telling them they had been used, that they were a sham, that they were puppets of Public Security.