Shan nodded solemnly. “Excellent. And then you looked for evidence?”
The soldier frowned. “Who are you exactly? I don’t know if-”
“I am someone who so far has no particular reason to report your whereabouts to the garrison. It would be a shame to disturb your hard-earned vacation.”
The corporal swallowed hard. “I kept passing out, in and out of consciousness. I remember seeing that someone had closed the shirt and jacket of the younger corpse, and someone had pulled a blue cap low over her head. Someone was shouting to the lieutenant, pointing to a man standing on the road above at that sharp switchback curve, a hundred yards away. He had gotten out of his car and was looking down. When I came to again, the lieutenant was there, arguing with another officer, pointing at the man on the ground, who was covered in blood. Then my head exploded in pain and I blacked out again, for a long time. Next thing I knew, I was in a car bringing me here. The lieutenant had flagged it down, and ordered it to transport me here since all available military transport was being used to bring in teams to search for those damned monks. I passed out again. I woke up here. A doctor came in the next day, on his rounds out of Shigatse.”
“The bodies. What were they saying about them? Who carried them away?”
The young Chinese gazed thoughtfully at a stain on the opposite wall. “My memories jump around, like those movies where the camera keeps changing. There was an army truck. People were eating peaches. The bodies were on planks being lifted into the truck, the minister and the one in the blue cap. They have a place they keep bodies on ice at the spa in the mountains. The last thing I remember is the lieutenant sitting with his head in his hands, looking like his world had ended. That new officer was kicking dirt over the blood, saying all foreigners had to be kept away. Then he lit the oil that showed where the bodies were.”
“He burned it?”
The soldier nodded slowly. His eyelids seemed to be getting heavy, his head was sinking deeper into his pillow. “He had his own chant, like that old monk. Except he kept saying Ta ma de, ta ma de, ta ma de.” Damn, damn, damn. “I remember seeing the shapes of the bodies in flames. It was as if he were cremating their spirits.”
Shan watched as the corporal slept, replaying their conversation. There had been a witness, in the distance, who had seen two bodies. The knobs had carried away two corpses. But on the slope that particular day, at that particular hour, there had been three dead bodies.
The government of the People’s Republic often boasted of its achievements in bridging the gaps between disparate peoples, and discovering ways to push old traditions into the cause of modern socialism. Here, in this high, hidden corner of Tibet, at the gate of the People’s Institute for the Treatment of Criminal Disorders, the knobs’ infamous yeti factory, Shan encountered proof of this miracle. Half a dozen solemn Tibetans, four men and two women, slipped on frayed and faded laboratory coats, on the backs of which large black X’s had been marked. Two young knob guards nervously watched, hands on their rifles, as if expecting to be attacked. The six were ragyapa, fleshcutters, the peculiar, often shunned breed who traditionally disposed of bodies by cutting them up and feeding them to vultures. Public Security had reincarnated them for the twenty-first century, had reversed the polarity of their existence, had decided to supply them pieces of bodies out of which to make something whole. This particular clan of ragyapa was assigned to removal of infectious waste and body parts from the knobs’ special clinic.
Shan pulled his hat low, turned his face away as he donned one of the coats, not daring to look back toward the entry road, half expecting Tsipon to appear and pull him away from the gatehouse.
“By my count you have less than a day left. I need those porters,” the Tibetan had growled when Shan found him in his office late the day before.
“I know where the body is.” Shan had then produced a ragged sheet of paper from his pocket then scribbled something and handed it to the Tibetan.
Tsipon’s face sagged as he read Shan’s words. “You have suffered a complete mental breakdown. I hear it is common among former prisoners.”
“And I hear you want to buy an apartment in Macau. You won’t be able to afford a broom closet without those American dollars.”
Tsipon frowned. “My little bird Kypo sings too much,” he snapped, then stood, lit a cigarette, and gazed out his window. “I promised you I’d get you inside the spa. If I grant your request, this is it. Your one and only chance inside. I’m done bending rules for you. You can go in for that damned colonel now or for your son later.”
Shan had expected it would be the bargain Tsipon offered, but now, hearing the words, something inside frantically urged him to reject it. He spoke looking down at his feet. “They go in before dawn, every other day.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve seen them,” Shan said. He was not about to tell Tsipon that at least once a week he found a way to steal onto the remote ridge by the yeti factory and watch, praying for a glimpse of his son at a window or exercising on the grounds.
“If you are discovered,” Tsipon declared in a tentative tone, “I won’t even return the call when Public Security tries to reach me.”
“If they arrest me there,” Shan rejoined, “they won’t bother to make any calls.”
The thought seemed to encourage Tsipon. He waved the paper toward Shan. “These people you want to use for cover,” he added with a perverse grin, “they are like animals. They even scare the knobs.”
Shan had indeed been counting on the guards’ discomfort with the fleshcutters. The soldiers who handed out the lab coats seemed not nearly as interested in screening the workers as quickly getting rid of the shabbily dressed, low-caste Tibetans.
Moments later they were inside, retrieving stainless steel buckets and two large laundry tubs on wheels from a janitor’s closet before disappearing down a dimly lit corridor.
The Tibetans did their accustomed chore with silent determination, moving from one surgical room to another, emptying several sacks of bloody towels into one of the laundry tubs, then tossing in stained cloth bundles from canisters marked CONTAMINATED before looking to Shan with an air of anticipation. He had known several ragyapa before. They were people of few words and fewer fears. He had met them before dawn to explain his goal that morning, and had listened and agreed to their rules about touching even the smallest of mortal remains. Unknown to the knobs, the ragyapa did not burn the body parts as they were instructed to do, but took them to consecrated grounds for dispersal to the birds. Touching the dead was not taboo to them; it was a sacred duty.
The oldest of the men now took the lead, walking down a corridor marked Kitchens. A woman in a nurse’s uniform saw them and scurried away. A janitor with a broom muttered an oath, then ducked into an unlit room. Many in modern Tibet regarded the fleshcutters with disdain but others knew them to be special emissaries of the Lord of Death.
Four of the party took up positions at each of the kitchen entry doors as the others watched Shan enter the large walk-in refrigeration unit at the back of the room. He moved toward the heavy racks at the rear. Slabs of beef and pork. Boxes of fresh vegetables beside dressed chickens. Like sailors on submarines, the staff at such remote sites were well fed and well paid to offset the hardship.
He studied the pipes that carried the coolant, noting how they disappeared through the side wall, then spoke in low, urgent tones to his companions. Soon kitchen staff would arrive to begin fixing the morning meal. A minute later they stood at a set of double swinging doors in a short corridor behind the kitchen, secured not by locks but by a single small sign. Morgue, it said, in Chinese. Shan left two of the men at the entrance to the corridor, then gestured for the others with the empty laundry tub to follow, pushed open the door and trotted to the heavy metal door at the back of the chamber, an identical match to that in the kitchen. Turning on the light switch by the entry, he stepped inside.