“You can’t just-”
“Someone tried to kill Gyalo. His son is convinced it was Public Security.”
Jin shrugged. “Two officials have been murdered.”
“It wasn’t the knobs. Whoever did it never asked a question about the killings. They had no interest in detaining him. They left him for dead in the pit, then rifled through his old things. Things from the first uprising.”
The constable dropped the magazine onto his desk, opened to a photo of young men and women surfing along a white-sand beach lined with palm trees. “One of those Western climbers read this article to me at base camp,” Jin announced, gazing at the photo. “It says some of the experts imagine the water is snow and they are riding down a mountainside. I could do that,” Jin declared in an oddly dreamy tone. “I know how to sled.”
Shan closed the magazine.
Jin seemed not to notice. “I have a cousin who was able to get across the border without getting shot. He got a job in Thailand, in a restaurant. He says they do this there, this water riding.”
“Surfing.”
“This surfing. He says he could get me a job too if I ever got permission to leave the country.”
Shan covered the magazine with his hand. “Like you said, two officials have been murdered. Why aren’t you in the field?”
“I asked Tsipon about getting a visa to live in Thailand, or India maybe,” Jin continued in a hollow voice. “He just laughed. He said no one in law enforcement gets permission to emigrate, because we know too many secrets about the government. Tell me it isn’t true.”
“You collaborated with the American Megan Ross,” Shan declared, pushing the tone of a government prosecutor into his words. “You divulged that the mountain road was being closed for the minister, that she was going to drive alone in a car ahead of the prison bus. We could probably find a witness who will recall seeing you give her a ride to the hotel the night before.”
The blood seemed to be draining from Jin’s face.
“Revealing a secret vital to state security- to a foreigner no less.”
“It wasn’t exactly. .” Jin murmured. “I didn’t. .” He looked forlornly at the magazine.
“In this country,” Shan continued, “law enforcement officials who breach state security have been executed. When Megan Ross comes down off her mountain you’d better start running.” If he couldn’t use the American’s death to find the truth then maybe he too should start pretending she was alive.
“I can arrest you, Shan. I can ship you away.”
Shan smiled and stopped pressing. He didn’t want Jin paralyzed, just focused on their mutual problem.
“Gyalo was attacked by two men in black clothes. Hoods over their heads. Strangers. Who were they?”
“Public Security does things differently since the last uprising. They still don’t mind hauling off an entire village or gompa. But if they have to deal with an individual Tibetan, they do it in private, in the shadows.”
“Why would they want to punish Gyalo?”
Jin seemed to see an offer of hope in Shan’s words. “Last week, after Wu was murdered, he got really drunk, stinking drunk. I walked in to see him strutting along the top of the bar like a soldier, pretending to be shot, and dying, again and again as customers tossed coins. I tried to get him to stop, because I knew soldiers were coming into town soon. He laughed when I pulled him down, said he wouldn’t want to be a soldier in the mountains now, with all the ghosts coming out.”
“Ghosts?”
“He said the only demons that ever frightened the Chinese were the ones from forty years ago, the ones who had been dead all these years. He said soon they would be swarming down out of the mountains, riding on the backs of yetis.”
Shan caught the scent of smoke on Jin, saw for the first time soot stains on the shoulder of his tunic. “You haven’t said where you’ve been.”
“There was a fire. Nothing big. That cottage Tsipon loans to foreign climbers. We saved the structure, but most of the gear was lost.”
“Whose gear?”
“Tsipon’s new American customers used it when they stayed in town.”
Shan stepped to the window. He knew the little one-room cottage behind Tsipon’s depot, had helped clean it several times. He leaned toward the glass to glimpse the large building at the southern edge of town. There was indeed a thin column of smoke rising behind it.
“Who did it?”
“We are allowed to report only so many crimes, so we’re calling it an accident. Those climbers get sloppy, keeping matches and fuel canisters together.”
“Who did it?” Shan pressed.
“I told you. No one. But there’s one funny thing. When they saw it everyone came running out of the warehouse to help. Except Kypo. He ran to one of the cars and sped away.”
“Toward Tumkot?”
“Just being a good son.”
“What does this have to do with Ama Apte?”
“Nothing. Like I said, we’re calling it an accident.”
Shan leaned over the constable. “Why,” he said slowly, insistently, “would you connect it to the astrologer?”
“She has a thing about certain foreigners. An American writer was here a couple years ago, researching Western connections to the region over the past century. There are some great stories about the spies the British sent across the border dressed as monks or pilgrims.”
“And?”
“I caught her putting dirt in the writer’s gas tank.”
Shan considered Jin’s words a moment. “But you let her go.”
“Damned right. She threatened to tell my fortune.”
As Shan’s gaze fixed on a basket of shiny metallic objects on the desk Jin rose and looked anxiously toward the door. “You said you had a call to make.”
Shan lifted a steel carabiner, one of half a dozen in the basket. “What are you finding in the hills?”
“Nothing.”
“The snaplinks were supposed to lead you to the monks.”
Jin shrugged. “The American woman apparently hands them out to children like candy. Snaplinks with prayer beads attached.”
“Beads?”
“Every link she leaves has a bracelet of prayer beads strung through it. Like she’s some kind of itinerant nun.”
Jin took a hesitant step toward the door.
“Everything’s changed, Jin. Publicly they will call it a criminal conspiracy. Behind closed doors, where it counts, it will be termed another uprising. More gompas will be closed. Monks will be considered a threat to border security. You can’t suppose they will keep local Tibetans in law enforcement. You’ll be sweeping streets in Shogo. That’s assuming Cao doesn’t find out the entire crime hinged on your leaking a state secret to Ross.”
The constable’s desolate gaze told Shan that Jin understood perfectly. The Tibetan cast a longing glance toward the glossy image of surfers on the white-sand beach, then he shut the door. “I saw two men in dark sweatshirts that day, coming down the trail, hoods over their heads,” he said. “They were running down the trail, toward the murders. Big men, strong, smelling of onions. At first I thought they were Public Security,” he said with apology in his voice. “If I had seen them in the marketplace that’s what I would have thought.”
“But there was no need for undercover guards on the trail.”
“I couldn’t see their faces.”
“And they ran toward the murders. Which means that, if they weren’t knobs, they were probably accomplices.”
Jin winced, opened the door.
Shan picked up the phone receiver.
Jin’s face clouded. “There are other phones.”
“I am reasonably certain Public Security isn’t listening to this one.”
Jin cast Shan a sour look, and fled.
Shan lifted the phone and dialed. The satellite phones used by the trekking companies typically took a long time to connect. But after a few seconds there was a short ringing sound and Yates’s voice came through.
“You need to be more careful with your matches,” Shan began, speaking in English.
“I wasn’t anywhere near that cottage,” the American growled. “Now I’ve got nowhere to sleep but up here. It’s like someone wants to drive me away.”