“Did Megan Ross keep her gear there?”
“Sure, some of it. It’s where she was staying, until she went to the hotel the night before,” the American added.
“We need to move those extra porters,” Shan said. “Give them some heavy mountain clothes and meet me on the base camp road.”
The American took a moment to grasp Shan’s meaning. “They’re gone. They pushed the boxes out at the back and sneaked away. Like they were suddenly afraid of me. Whoever helped them wants me out of China.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re allowed to burn trash in a barrel behind the compound. As I was burning a Public Security officer came up, took pictures.”
“What exactly were you burning?”
“Nothing but trash I thought. But in a box I was about to burn they found a monk’s robe. They took me inside to search my room here. Under my cot they found a box of carabiners with a strand of prayer beads inside each one. One of the knobs fingered his baton.
If there hadn’t been a lot of foreign witnesses I’d probably have a broken skull now.”
“I need to see you.”
“I’ve got equipment being staged from base camp today. Tomorrow morning I could meet you in town.”
“Not tomorrow. Not in town. Tumkot village, in an hour.”
Shan was climbing into the old Jiefang truck at Tsipon’s depot when two of the warehouse workers rounded the corner, sootstained and carrying buckets. He paused, waited for them to enter the building, then slipped around the corner. Although the cottage was intact, smoke still wafted out of the gap in the open door. He glanced over his shoulder to confirm no one was watching then darted inside. Smoke hung heavy over the ceiling. The acrid scent of burned nylon and plastic mingled with the stench of singed down. The remains of what had been a bed under the window on the wall opposite the door was heaped with smoldering clothes, charred magazines and papers. Tsipon, always wary of strangers on his property, had probably sent away the fire crew prematurely. If given enough oxygen, the bed would probably burst into flame.
Shan found a T-shirt on the floor, pressed it to his mouth and nose, and searched the ruin of the room. A nylon pack, mostly melted into a blue plastic lump. Several novels in English. Three long metal poles, the trekking sticks favored by foreign trekkers. Clothes strewn everywhere, some clearly belonging to a woman. A small chest of drawers under a window on the side wall, the drawers all hanging open. Two empty duffel bags. Four cardboard boxes, sealed, labeled YATES EVEREST EXPEDITION. He returned to the entry and considered the scene. Before the fire someone had been searching, looking for something that belonged to the Americans. He considered where he would hide something in such a simple open space, then moved along the walls looking behind the few pieces of furniture, under the drawers. Nearly gagging on the smoke, he cracked the window on the side wall and studied the ceiling as the smoke was drawn away. He stepped on a chair, then on the chest of drawers by a window on the side wall, studying the angled roof and its beams. Finally he spotted a dark patch in the shadow of the corner nearest the door. He grabbed one of the trekking sticks and probed, feeling resistance, jerking the stick sideways to dislodge a small gray backpack.
Urgently Shan searched the zipped compartments, discovering at last a compact notebook festooned with pencil drawings of flowers, mountains, and birds. He was opening the inside cover as the glass on the back window shattered. Three small metal canisters were thrown in quick succession onto the bed. The sudden rush of oxygen ignited the bed’s smoldering contents as the door was slammed shut from the outside.
Shan, still standing on the little chest, kicked out the window as the far side of the room burst into flame. He was halfway through the opening when the first of the fuel canisters exploded.
He found himself on the ground ten feet from the building, face in the dirt, his ears ringing, his fingers aching from their white-knuckled grip on the American’s notebook. The bungalow was already a ball of fire. If he had not been at the window, in a position to kick it out, the first explosion would have knocked him out, the second and third would have killed him.
With what seemed to be a great effort he climbed to his feet, stuffed the notebook inside his shirt, and was staggering away as the first of the workers ran around the corner of the warehouse.
“The fool Tsipon ordered the fire crew away,” the man groused, and started yelling for buckets of water.
Shan, knowing his hidden assailant would be powerless to act with so many witnesses, could not resist a look inside the notebook. He scanned the early pages before putting the old truck into gear. The American woman’s name was printed in neat letters on the inside cover, which otherwise was covered with a list of mountains flanked by small sketches of monks and prayer wheels. Most pages contained diary-style entries and random technical notes about climbing, some outlined in boxes, some written sideways or even upside down. They were flanked by more images in pencil, mostly of Tibetan scenes or objects though some, like a moose and a cow wearing a large bell, were from other continents. But it was the diary entries that interested Shan. They began with a date three years before, written in Katmandu, then quickly shifted to entries from the southern base camp on the Nepal side of Everest. There were sketches of climbing routes, maps showing advance camps, lines of poetry, transcription of haiku, even names of sherpas with comments on their skills, a single line in large black letters that said, Wherever there are humans you’ll find flies and Buddhas.
As he pulled out of the parking lot his mind was racing faster than the fire truck rushing toward the warehouse. One of the first names mentioned on Megan Ross’s list of sherpas was that of Tenzin Nuru.
Shan left the old truck in a clearing half a mile below Tumkot and was picked up by Yates in his red utility vehicle a few minutes before he reached the village. Shan motioned the American to park in the shadow between two sheds at the edge of the village.
“Does this mean anything to you?” he asked as he took a peche sheet removed from his workshop and rolled it, extending it to the American. “A prayer rolled like this?”
Yates took the little cylinder of parchment, unrolled it, repeated the process himself. “Maybe just a way to store a prayer? Or a way to put it in a mani wall, or one of the little statues,” he added. He seemed utterly fascinated by the rolled prayer. Shan let him hold on to it as they moved along the dirt street and down the worn stone stairs that led to the main square.
No one was home at Kypo’s house. Ama Apte’s house was likewise empty. Shan lifted the bench outside the fortuneteller’s entry and set it inside, in the shadows just past the pool of light cast through the open door. Yates, restless as ever, wandered around the dimly lit stalls of the lower floor, asking Shan the Tibetan names of some of the implements, the meaning of some of the fortuneteller’s signs drawn on the wall inside the door. He stumbled over something lying in the shadows and the goat leaped up with a surprised bleat. Frightened at first, it quieted as the American stroked its back. Shan saw the animal’s swollen udder, found the tin bucket the astrologer kept by the door and began milking as Yates sang a song to the goat about a racehorse named Stewball.
There they sat, like two lonely shepherds, when Ama Apte walked in with Kypo and her granddaughter. Though they bore the grime of heavy trekking and looked exhausted, Ama Apte’s son advanced on them as if to eject them from the house, resentment in his eyes.
“We are not your enemies, Kypo” Shan stated, putting a restraining hand on Yates as the American began to rise.
“You are not Tibetans.” Kypo’s voice grew heated as he spoke. “It’s always the same. You outsiders dabble in our affairs like it is some game, then leave us to take the punishment.”