It took a long time for Shan to respond. “But Tenzin was dead,” he tried once more.
“I told you. The mountain needed him again, so Tenzin rose up and rode my mule away.”
Ama Apte cut off any response from Shan with a challenging gaze, then reached into the sleeve of her dress and extracted her Mo dice. Oblivious to Shan now, she closed her eyes, her lips moving in the short mantra that evoked the wisdom of the Mo, then tossed the dice onto the packed earth. She studied them a moment, then scooped them up and turned to Shan with an apologetic expression. “Only sorrow can come of it,” she declared, then stood, straightening her apron, signaling that her hospitality had been exhausted. Shan watched as she climbed the ladder stair to the upper story. Again she had told him the answer, but she had not told him the question.
Chapter Seven
The Shogo town infirmary was mostly an aid station used more often than not for tourists who needed relief from an attack of altitude sickness or mending of sprains and minor broken bones after tumbling off a rock. It was a small, shabby affair, housed in a rundown former army barracks at the edge of town, its only remotely new adornments the bright metal sign on the door marked EMERGENCY in Chinese, English, German and Japanese and a banner reading EMBRACE POLITICAL STABILITY, a favorite of Party sloganeers since the 2008 uprisings. After watching the street behind him in the mirror for nearly a minute, Shan parked the old blue truck at the curb, then climbed the crumbling concrete steps and took a tentative step inside.
At a reception counter a plump woman sat on a stool, her head cradled on her folded arms, fast asleep. Beside her on the counter were racks of faded brochures in half a dozen languages about the symptoms and treatment of altitude sickness. Behind her were wooden shelves with more than a score of small oxygen bottles fitted with breathing masks, under a sign that proclaimed the bottles to be the property of Tingri County. Past the counter were two cots with folded blankets, for those who had to take their oxygen lying down. Beyond them a single wooden door with peeling red paint was flanked by glossy posters advertising the Chinese International Travel Service. Shan went to the door, glanced at the sleeping woman as she emitted a loud snore, and pushed it open.
Only one of the six beds in the dusty, poorly lit chamber was occupied. At first, from the patient’s strange jerking motions, Shan suspected the young Chinese man lying on it, knees folded up, had suffered some sort of nerve damage. But by the time he reached the bed he could see the little black box in the man’s hands, could hear the dim pinging noises as he feverishly worked the buttons. Shan studied him in silence a moment, taking in the bandage on his crown, the short line of incisions on his temple, then noticed the uniform hanging on a peg by the bed.
Not until Shan had pulled a stool close to the bed and sat down did the patient take notice. His fingers stopped in midair. The color drained from his face. The game box dropped onto his blanket.
Shan gestured to the bandage on his head. “There seems to be no permanent damage.”
The soldier took a long time to find his tongue. “I didn’t. . ” he stammered. “I wasn’t. .”
“There was a lot of confusion that day,” Shan suggested.
The young Chinese straightened up against the metal headboard, nervously examining Shan, noticeably relaxing as he saw his worn pants, his tattered hiking boots.
“I’m not an officer, Sergeant,” Shan assured him. “Is it sergeant?”
“Corporal.”
Shan nodded. “All the officers from that day are gone, Corporal, disappeared deep into China.” He poured the soldier a glass of water from a pitcher on his bedstand. “It’s why no one has missed you yet. There are a lot of distractions right now. The new officers must assume you were reassigned too. All the ones who would know for sure are gone.”
“I wrote a note to my lieutenant but it came back saying he was gone,” the corporal ventured uneasily. “I’ll be back by payday.”
“I have no doubt,” Shan said. “And until then, who could deny that you needed some protracted sick leave?”
The soldier drained the glass. “I still get headaches. I have cuts in my scalp. The bandages need changing.”
“Your first bandage was from a lama’s robe. Do you remember?”
The soldier slowly nodded. “The old fool. He could have run, could have saved himself five years of misery. But he settled down beside me like some old yak. When I came to my senses and stood he didn’t even notice, just kept up that chant of his.”
“Before you stood, did you see anything?”
“My vision came and went. People were running. The guards ran down the road, shooting pistols. Something ran in and out of the bus.”
“You mean somebody.”
“A yeti,” the soldier offered in a tentative voice.
Shan leaned closer. “You saw a yeti jump into the bus?”
The corporal shrugged. “In the barracks some of the old sergeants say yetis throw stones at our trucks when they drive in the mountains. When things go missing at the barracks the men say a yeti took them, kind of a joke. Whatever it was moved fast, without fear of our guns. My vision was blurred. I saw something dark, the size of a man. I thought I smelled spices for a moment, and heard tiny bells.” He shrugged again. “They say strange things happen with concussions.”
Someone, Shan reminded himself, had taken the files from the prison bus, someone wise enough to know the files represented the primary connection the government had to the monks, someone brave-or foolhardy-enough to chance being shot by a guard.
“And then,” Shan asked, “after the lama tended your wounds you went up the road? Not to go search for the others in your squad?”
“That’s where they all were by then, around the bodies, shouting, calling on radios, all frantic, scared to death. They weren’t worried about the monks anymore. They barely noticed when I got there so I sat against a rock and watched. I was still bleeding. I was fading in and out of consciousness.”
“What did you see of the dead?”
The soldier shrugged. “Two corpses. Bloody down the front, propped against the rocks.”
“You’re sure it was two?”
“Of course it was two. I saw them. The lieutenant was on the radio, shouting that there were two dead people. Both women.”
Shan took a deep, relieved breath. At last someone else shared his perception of reality. “How do you know?”
“One was that minister. We had seen her the day before at a rally. The lieutenant started looking for identity papers on the other. Someone said it was one of those men from the climbing conference.”
Shan recalled Megan’s Ross’s closed-cropped hair, the blood on her sturdy, weathered face. It was a simple human reaction, that he had often had to fight early in his career. No one liked to look into dead, bloody faces.
“What happened?”
“The lieutenant opened the jacket, searched the pockets, found nothing, became frantic, and pulled open the shirt. He cried out and jerked backward like he had been bitten by a snake. The body had breasts.”
“Then what?”
“There was another problem, a man lying on the ground by the road. A tough bastard, he kept trying to get up. They used those electric sticks on him. I passed out.”
Involuntarily Shan’s hand grasped his own upper arm, which still twitched from the many sticks that had touched him that day, and the days after. He had not remembered resisting the knobs, but he had no doubt who was the bastard the soldier spoke about.
“I remember watching the lieutenant open the trunk of the car and pull out a quart of oil. He used it to outline the bodies.”
Shan’s head snapped up. “He what?”
“Those other fools didn’t know anything about investigations. He understood. I watch murder shows too. First thing you do, he told the soldiers, you mark where the bodies were found. Usually they use chalk or white tape or something. But he couldn’t find anything else to use.”