Shan bent and squinted, meeting the gaze of the scarred man in the quilted jacket. “It is you I came looking for. I saw you slip down this alley. Hubei, is that what they call you? After the province?” He had known many criminals who took the name of their homes to hide their real names.
“You played me for a fool once today. Don’t make the mistake of trying it a second time.”
“I was only protecting the boy,” Shan said as he began tossing the pebble from one hand to the other. “If I had seen your arm before, I would have used someone else. Were you imprisoned in Tibet?” Shan had noticed the tattoo on the man’s exposed arm during his earlier demonstration.
“Military prison. Xinjiang,” Hubei replied in a surly tone, referring to the vast area north of Tibet known for its deserts and massive prison camps. “Five years. The first month I was there I thought we would all die of the heat. But it was winter that did the government’s work. In January and February we stacked bodies like firewood.”
Shan rolled up his sleeve and revealed his own tattoo. “404th People’s Construction Brigade,” he explained. “Sometimes when men died, the guards made us bury them right in the roadbed. The bodies were usually still warm.” He looked away for a moment, fighting a sudden ache in his heart. He had never really left the gulag. Unpredictably, abruptly, the tormenting memories resurfaced, so vivid it seemed he was there, the dusty wind in his face, old monks being beaten with batons for mouthing forbidden mantras.
The wiry miner was staring at him, perplexed, and Shan realized the man had been speaking. “I asked, why seek me out?”
Shan said, tossing the pebble again, “I need to know if you and Bing saw the American woman and what she was doing.”
“No one takes gold out of the streams for us,” the man complained. “We don’t have time to wander about watching pretty butterflies.”
“What did you observe?” Shan pressed. “Bing has seen her and I don’t think he ventures far without you. You can cover a lot of ground on that bicycle. The sheep trails are your highways.” He glanced at the helmet. “Every town should have a mounted police force. ”
One end of the man’s mouth curled up as he stared at Shan. “They say you came up from some valley to the south. Go back. Up here, we boil a man like you for soup. You don’t belong. You don’t understand anything. And we don’t need an outsider to tell us who the murderer is.”
“If something happens to the missing woman,” Shan said, “Public Security will need to blame someone. You and I both know they tend to favor former convicts. Makes for good reading in Beijing.”
Hubei frowned. “At first we figured they were just trying to snatch a share of our gold without registering a claim with us. We don’t like newcomers. Bing dealt with them. He warned them to stay out of our way, said he didn’t want to see them again, said if they had to pray to do so secretly. The idiots. Collecting pretty rocks and flowers in a place like this.”
“Pray?”
“That’s what it looked like they were doing mostly, praying in front of those old rock paintings of gods and devils. Or else measuring eyeballs.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I saw the woman again. East of here, up the slope, two days ago. She was alone, and frightened, on her knees, measuring parts of paintings with a small ruler. The eyeball of the demon, the width of his arm. When she saw me she pulled out a pocketknife. I tossed her an apple. She ate it as if she hadn’t had a meal for days. When I took one step forward she pointed the knife at me. I left. None of my business.”
Hubei retreated into the shadows. When he emerged a moment later a pack hung from his shoulder and a pair of battered binoculars was suspended from his neck. Shan tossed the pebble to him.
Hubei caught it and stared at his hand for a moment. “Fuck you,” he snapped. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
“It proves you are left-handed. Do you have any notion how few Chinese are left-handed? It’s against official educational policy. You’re a former convict engaged in an illegal activity, and you’re left-handed. The Public Security report on the murders would almost write itself.” Shan stepped closer to the miner. “Who found that dead farmer?”
Hubei hurled the stone against the opposite wall. “Some of the men. When I saw he was one of theirs, I went to tell some shepherds.”
“Where did you find him?”
“The body was at the base of a ridge that juts out from the mountain, a mile up the slope.” Hubei picked up his helmet and fastened it to a strap on his pack.
“You mean he was on his way down the ridge when he was killed?”
“I mean that’s where he was found. No one from Little Moscow goes up that ridge. I can’t speak for fool farmers and their murderers. Not our concern. I just wanted to be rid of the body.”
Suddenly Shan understood. “Do you mean the same ridge where the man was killed last year?”
“Where we buried him. And where his ghost took revenge on his murderer. It’s haunted. Men saw a skeleton on his grave. Some say it walks up there in the moonlight. Some say they see it elsewhere, as if it’s on patrol in the night. More and more miners come back here to sleep after their day’s work.”
Shan paused, trying to connect the words to the strange video in which Abigail had handled arm and leg bones. “The two that were killed last week,” he said. “What happened to their bodies?”
“If you’re talking about the flesh, I guess the birds took care of it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Last year, two days after those two died, two new skeletons appeared on that grave. It scared the hell out of everyone, believe me.” Hubei grinned at Shan’s confusion, then twisted past him. “Touch anything and you die,” the man said in an oddly whimsical tone and went toward the town square.
“Where does one get cash in Little Moscow?” Shan called after him. “Up here I would think cash is scarcer than gold.”
Hubei glanced back impatiently. “Banking is a government monopoly,” he quipped, then lifted the helmet and trotted away.
Shan had found more riddles. But he had also confirmed that Abigail Natay was probably still alive. She had survived the attack and continued up the mountain as her uncle had guessed. She was pursuing her work despite the danger, even despite apparently having run out of food. It was as if her life depended on it.
He wandered about the miners’ quarters then paused as he rounded the corner of the square to survey Bing’s new-age community. Every man there, including Thomas, Hostene and himself, was a fugitive of a kind. You couldn’t enter the new world without leaving the old behind.
As he watched, men began moving quickly, spreading an alarm, dispersing, some with packs on their backs, some holding old hunting rifles. Bing stood near Thomas, who had grown pale and was gazing at the ground with a look of shock on his face. The mayor of Little Moscow spoke with a man who kept pointing toward the east, replying to Bing in low, excited whispers. The Navajo was staring at the fleeing miners, at Bing and Thomas, in confusion.
As Shan approached, Thomas said in a grief-stricken tone, “You should be the one to speak. Give him more hot tea, then tell him.”
“Tell him what?” Shan asked Bing.
“A miner ran into town,” Bing reported. “Some mine works were sabotaged this morning, all the stakes removed and left burning in a pile.”
“But the miners sometimes-,” Shan began.
Bing interrupted. “Not this time. Whoever did it left something behind, as a warning. It was a woman’s hand.”
Chapter Six
They ran at a frantic pace at first, following Bing up one ravine and down another, soon emerging onto a sunlit plateau. Bing raised his hand for them to stop as he gazed toward a heap of rock slabs in the near distance. Shan did not miss the instinctive movement of Bing’s hand to his belt at the small of his back.