“Everything was covered in blood. I brought plastic gloves when I returned but-”
His answer was cut off by an angry exclamation from the dining room. Kohler stood near the door, glaring. Thomas colored, then without another word trotted toward Kohler, who led him into the kitchen.
Shan darted toward the entry, then hesitated and slipped into Gao’s office instead. He spent a moment surveying the framed photos, ashamed at the quiver of fear that some of the familiar faces sent down his spine. Lingering at the back of several photos, looking like a tourist who had wandered into the scene, was a younger Kohler.
On the desk were recent letters, most sent by fax, from addresses in Beijing. He glanced at the small gray fax machine at the side of the desk that had received the letters. It meant there was a telephone wire strung from the base below, but it also might mean there was no reliable electronic mail connecting Gao’s little palace to the outside world. He quickly scanned the faxed messages for their originators. The Academy of Scientists, arranging a speaking date for a conference in January. The Special Science Section of the State Council, one of the unofficial, private little committees that advised Beijing’s top echelon. The director of civilian personnel for regional military bases, asking for staffing recommendations. The Party Council on Scientific Policy, seeking review of a secret research paper.
Beside the correspondence was a rolled-up newspaper. On closer examination Shan saw that it was not simply rolled but taped tightly to form a cylindrical package. One end had been sealed with tape, the other was cut open. Shan upended the tube, dumping out a hard object wrapped in the coarse toilet tissue used in most Tibetan homes. A second later he held it in his hand. Despite Gao’s assurance to the contrary, someone had come from the other side, from Drango. The gold beetle glistened more brightly in the sunlight shining through Gao’s office window than it had in the light of the butter lamps in the stable. He recalled Gendun’s punishment and Chodron’s obsession with sending the beetle back to where it belonged. Shan looked up at the nearest photo of Gao, a portrait in which his breast gleamed with the medals bestowed on civilians who performed vital services for the state. Shan had found the home of the mountain deity.
He pushed the golden beetle back into the tube and headed for the door to the outside. With a surge of relief he felt the knob turn. The door opened. But as he stepped outside Kohler looked up from a nearby rock where he sat smoking a cigarette.
“Do you have any notion how quickly our garbage disposal system works?” he asked. “One call, and a squad of soldiers appear. Then our garbage disappears forever.”
Shan looked longingly at the cliffs above, the route back to his world. “But you and Dr. Gao don’t like to reduce yourselves to that level.”
Kohler grinned. “Something like that. And you present such an interesting opportunity for us.”
“If you are looking for kitchen help, I am always dropping things.”
“Comrade, you are going to have Gao rolling on the floor,”
Kohler said and gestured Shan back into the house.
Four hours later he sat with Kohler on the square stone-walled roof of the high tower. The room under the roof in which Kohler had locked him was the most agreeable of prisons. Though a windowless chamber, it contained an actual bed and linens. Before locking him in, the German had explained that he and Thomas had similar rooms on the levels below.
Kohler had invited Shan to the roof to watch the sunset with a bottle and two glasses, and was now holding the fifth glass of pepper vodka he had consumed. Shan had sipped from the first glass of the pungent liquid when Kohler pressed it on him, then clandestinely tipped the contents over the side, only to have the glass refilled.
“We’re all outlaws of a sort,” Kohler said, his eyes reflecting the purple light of the dusk. “How could any sane man not be, in this world we have created?”
“Have you been away from home long?” Shan probed.
“Home? What’s home? My homeland was declared redundant. Mergers and acquisitions, they call it. Someone in Bonn or maybe Washington decided to make a takeover offer so good it couldn’t be refused. Presto, no country. Just a bunch of branch offices reporting to what had once been our biggest competitor. Entire towns were discontinued. I got a letter from my sister, who once headed a school. She scrubs floors in Frankfurt now. But she has her own car and a mountain of debt so she is happy as a pig in mud.” He saluted the sunset with his vodka glass. “Lha fucking gyal lo.
“I never really had a home there anyway. I came to Beijing as a doctoral student on a special exchange program for physicists. Dr. Gao took me on as a special assistant. The first year we communicated by drawing equations on chalkboards. By the time I understood Mandarin I was already living in a spare room of his house, though we spent damned little time sleeping in those days. I could go home and be a cog in a wheel of Moscow’s science machine or stay and live out every scientist’s fantasy. Unlimited resources. Billions and billions. Unlimited glory.”
“At least within certain bureaus in Beijing,” Shan submitted.
Kohler saluted him with a clumsy sweep of his glass. “Once wars were won by the side that could best afford to keep sending men to the slaughter, which for centuries made China the mightiest nation on earth. Every man with a beard who rode out of the West was smothered by a hundred Chinese. “Now it’s a game of cards. Small men at a big table play guessing games about what equations the other side’s big men have written on secret chalkboards.” Kohler burst into laughter, then drained his glass again.
“If you have a chalkboard,” Shan said, “I would guess it’s full of questions about two murders that took place on the western side of the mountain. You betray your concern by holding me.”
“What we worry about is the inexplicable. Death happens all the time on the other side of the mountain, it’s to be expected. It’s like the Wild West over there. You know, American cowboys,” he said, using the English words. “But you, Inspector Shan, are inexplicable. Why do you appear at this moment? That worries us. We had another escaped prisoner once. He was found looking in the windows. He begged us not to call the army. He offered to be our slave, offered to go back over to the other side and bring us gold. Thomas guessed you must be a secret agent of some kind. I laughed.” Kohler examined Shan for a moment. “What explains a man like you?”
Shan became aware of music rising from below, a confused mixture of sounds that he eventually distilled into muted rock and roll overlaying the more distant tones of Beethoven. “That other prisoner. What happened to him?”
“He was annoying. Too nervous. Too talkative. I arranged for him to disappear.” Kohler poured himself another glass of his medicine. “But you, you are like a monk. You are focused, quiet. You have secrets. We have learned to be very careful about gray men with secrets.”
“I am nothing but what you see before you. My gray clothes are rags.”
Kohler drained his glass again.
The sun had disappeared over the ridge. The purple sky became streaked with silver. The narrow cleft had long since disappeared into shadow but not before Shan had fixed in his mind’s eye its location and a line of outcroppings that led straight to it.
“This Rapaki you spoke of earlier. Does he live in a cave?” Shan asked abruptly.
“Who?”
“The hermit no one wishes to discuss.”
“He’s harmless. Forget him. He’s just a goat with a robe. You might glimpse him in the distance before he scampers away.”