“Forgetting things. That seems to be the house specialty here.”
Shan refilled the two glasses, toasted the German, stealthily dumped his over the side, and refilled Kohler’s again. Kohler held the glass under his nostrils for a moment. “A good retirement requires discarding the last moment and living in the next.”
“Sounds lonely.”
“Sounds painless,” Kohler retorted. His head began to roll. He had to exert himself to keep it upright.
“I’m sorry we won’t have more time to get better acquainted,” Shan said. Kohler did not protest when Shan took the glass from his hand and set it on the wall.
“I have hidden the fucking key,” the German mumbled, though he seemed unable to move. “You will stay until the dragon decides to eat you.” Then he passed out.
Shan arranged Kohler as comfortably as possible, taking the precaution of removing the man’s shoelaces and using them to tie his hands to the arms of his chair before Shan descended to his bedroom. Kohler had proudly pointed out the nearby linen closet. Shan did a quick calculation, then removed ten sheets from the closet, quickly returned to the roof, and began knotting them together. One of the many things his years in Tibet had cured him of was his fear of heights.
Chapter Four
Shan was nearly in sight of Drango village the next morning when he heard an angry shout. He flattened against an outcropping, wondering if, against all odds, Kohler had had him followed by a squad of soldiers. He bore the bruises of a night passage through the ravine, having crossed the flimsy ladder bridge just before the moon hid behind clouds and then spent a restless few hours in a hole in the jumbled rocks, certain every tumbling stone was the sound of pursuing boots.
A string of curses in Mandarin erupted from the far side of the outcropping. He studied the trail behind him, then cautiously stepped around the rock, freezing momentarily before his foot came down on a freshly erected cairn. Eight inches high, it had been carefully constructed inside one of the pans used by miners for working streams, a sprig of fresh heather inserted in its center. It still smelled. It had been made of manure dropped from a mule or horse, and carefully placed in the middle of the trail above Drango. Peering around the rock Shan saw a middle-aged Chinese man berating a mule stacked high with cargo, trying to coerce it to turn down a fork in the trail. He grabbed a handful of the sweetgrass that grew in the cracks in the rocks at his feet and stepped around the far end of the outcropping. The animal’s head snapped up and the mule leaned toward the grass in Shan’s hand.
“It’s my beast,” the man growled. He raised his makeshift staff, a crooked but sturdy juniper limb, as if to hit Shan.
“But it’s Tibetan,” Shan said. “Tibetans have a custom of sharing part of the load when they travel.”
A pick and shovel were lashed to the top of the mule’s panniers. The man’s hand went to a knife in his belt. His grin was aimed past Shan’s shoulder. The hairs on the back of Shan’s neck rose as he slowly turned. A large dog sat on a slab of rock six feet away, fangs bared, ready to pounce.
“No bark,” the miner declared, showing his own yellowed teeth. “All bite.”
Shan let the mule eat the grass, then kneeled, facing the dog. “Why do you leave the mountain halfway through the season?” he asked the miner, who did not reply.
Shan spoke to the dog in Tibetan, as Lokesh did when meeting an unfamiliar animal, asking it how it felt, praising its obvious strength. A belief in reincarnation made for interesting relationships with animals. The dog’s fangs disappeared. It cocked its head and stepped forward, tentatively licking Shan’s hand.
“You’re no miner,” the stranger said. “And you’re not one of those damned farmers either.”
Shan pulled up his sleeve and displayed his tattoo. After so many years he had learned that though for many it was a cause for alarm, for others it was an icebreaker.
The tautness left the man’s face. He studied Shan, then extracted a small gleaming nugget from a pouch at his belt. “This is yours if you help me down the mountain to the road. Three days’ work. I’ve twisted my ankle.”
“I can’t,” Shan replied. “But I can wrap your ankle if you have some cloth so it will be easier for you to walk on it.”
“Under the shovel,” the miner said. “There’s an old piece of canvas.”
Shan did not miss the worried glance the man cast up the trail. Was he being followed? “Sit and unlace the boot,” Shan advised as he pointed to a nearby rock, then he retrieved the cloth. In five minutes he was expertly wrapping the swollen ankle. When he finished the man uttered a satisfied grunt and extracted a much smaller piece of gold.
Shan raised his palm to decline payment. “Just tell me what has frightened you.”
“I don’t fear a damned thing. It’s the way of things this summer. My old grandmother knew, after all the famines and wars she saw. Sometimes death stalks a land, she said, and there’s nothing man can do to stop it. If you aren’t smart enough to come in out of a hailstorm, don’t complain when your skull gets cracked. They closed my factory. Everyone says move to a big city to make money. I don’t want a big city.” The miner shrugged, watched a passing cloud for a moment. “I’ve got family I want to see again.”
The man lit a cigarette. “Two years ago an old friend from the army shows up. He asks me to hide him from the police for a few days while he waits for a ride to Hong Kong. In return he tells me the biggest secret in Tibet. After the snow melts, he says, load up a mule with supplies and follow this secret map to a place called Sleeping Dragon Mountain. Pick up gold from the ground and it’s yours. Last year I came, and it was good. I got enough to pay off my debts. This year started the same but then it got ugly. My camp was looted, half the gear stolen. A miner not far from me woke up in the night to find all the trees in his camp on fire. Another miner’s mule was killed by a painted stick stuffed down its throat.”
Shan looked up with sudden interest.
“Two weeks ago someone killed my other dog and stuffed a claim stick in its mouth.” The miner blew a plume of smoke toward the sky.
“Why? What do they want?”
“No one ever sees who does it. When it happens to you, you move your claim and they leave you alone.”
“Then they take over the claim?”
“No one takes it.”
Shan considered the reply a moment. “It’s as if you were just getting too close to something they don’t want you to see.”
“That’s what I thought. But they’ve all been in different places. Once up against the wall that divides the mountain. Once in a small grove of trees by an old painted rock. Once at the edge of a cliff. There’s enough gold, enough room, so it’s not worth it to try to oppose whoever is doing it.”
“But then those two men died.”
The man inhaled deeply on his cigarette, studying Shan. “A day after the murders I was on a high trail, walking along the top of a slope almost as steep as a cliff, when I saw two men above me, maybe three hundred yards higher up. I ducked into the shadows and didn’t think they noticed me. They were carrying heavy loads wrapped in cloth, on shoulder poles. One of them dropped something that rolled down the trail toward me. Round as a ball, in a burlap sack. It rolled almost to me before it fell off the trail and bounced into the gully far below. Some use twine to mark out their claims. I figured it was a ball of twine until it fell out of its sack. . ”
“But it wasn’t twine,” Shan said as he gently eased the man’s foot back into his boot, lacing it loosely. He lifted the man’s staff and began working on it with his pocketknife.
“It wasn’t anything I ever want to see again. It had been pounded by the rocks, as if someone had played soccer with it. I looked up and one of the men was studying me with binoculars. I leaped up and ran down the slope like some damned fool. That’s when I twisted my foot.”