“I have heard the term political map in English,” Shan said. “What does it mean?”
“It means cities and towns and highways, manmade features, are included,” Yates explained.
“In China all maps are political,” Shan said, and gestured to the map Yates was unfolding. “The government controls all maps. No military bases are shown but also terrain in sensitive areas is obscured.”
The American uttered a syllable of surprise and began pointing out discrepancies between the two maps. On the Chinese map large expanses along the border were just fields of white, indicating huge ice fields. Most of the border showed only general topographical lines and nothing else. Shan pointed to the American map. “It’s like a different land on your map,” he explained, and settled a fingertip on Tumkot. On the Chinese map the area above the settlement, the high plain that could not be seen from below, consisted entirely of an ice field, marked inaccessible, as the villagers insisted. But the American map showed a more narrow glacier above rough, steep, but open terrain.
With a pencil Shan made a mark on the road that led to the base camp. “The site of the murders,” he noted.
“What’s your point?”
“Ama Apte has admitted she helped Megan Ross with the avalanche that stopped the bus, but she will not explain how she managed such secrecy. No one could have gone up or down the road without being stopped. For someone from Tumkot to be involved they would have had to travel hours by road, and they would have been seen and stopped. But someone who knew these trails could have gone up and over the ridge. A difficult path, judging by the contours, but not impossible for a seasoned trekker.” He saw for the first time four different lightly drawn circles spread miles apart, three of them with X’s through the center. “You haven’t visited this drop zone?” he asked the American, pointing to a circle on the plateau above Tumkot.
“I must have made a mistake when the numbers were written down. There is no way up there. Megan said she tried, and it was impossible. All cliffs and ice along the only possible route.”
Shan studied the map again, and after a moment saw a dotted line that crossed into Nepal along a high altitude pass that was marked inaccessible on the Chinese map. He realized he was looking at the route the sherpas used to invisibly cross back and forth across the border. The border guards no doubt knew about it, but the weather would be so hostile at such an altitude that there would be no manned outpost.
“And you?” Shan asked at last, gesturing to his notebook. “What have I missed?”
“It’s all still a puzzle to me,” the American admitted. “We can ask the fortuneteller about the hidden meaning of twos when we see her again.”
“Twos?”
Yates turned to a page near the front of the pad and pointed to the words, written in English. “Religious Affairs office burns,” he read, and drew a line beneath it that extended past the words. “Tenzin killed” he said, and drew another line. “Minister Wu is killed.” Another line. “Director Xie is killed, on the same day Gyalo is attacked and left for dead,” he finished with another line. With the tip of the pencil he quickly wrote numbers in the spaces between the lines. “Two days, two days, four days. All twos or a combination of two. Ama Apte would probably say the mountain breathes in for a day, then breathes out.” He shrugged. “It’s nothing. I’m possessed by a math demon. Although,” he added in a curious tone, “it’s been two days since the last violence.”
Shan stood, strangely disturbed by Yates’s words, glancing back and forth from the map to the lines and numbers drawn by the American. He stepped to the edge of the cliff, letting the chill wind slam against his face, considering the pattern of life down in the world. Then abruptly he turned and darted over to Yates. “There is a place,” he announced as he urgently packed up the items on the bench, “that lives by a pulse of twos. If we hurry we can be there by sundown.”
Yates had not stumbled upon the rhythm of the mountain, Shan explained as they pulled into the dusty truckers’ compound in Yates’s red utility vehicle, but the pulse of the Friendship Highway. Shogo was strategically situated on the truckers run between the Nepalese border and Lhasa.
“It’s the natural break point. Drivers can get food and gas, then they sleep in their trucks or buy a cot in the back of the teashop. At dawn they pull out and reach their destination before nightfall. The regular drivers turn around the next morning and repeat the trip.”
“Putting them here every two days,” Yates concluded.
“Gyalo said the men who attacked him were strangers. He knows nearly everyone in town. Everyone else seems to think they were Public Security soldiers. But if they weren’t knobs,” Shan said, “they were transients.”
“So now we’re looking for murderous truck drivers? How many theories are you allowed before you admit failure?”
“Gyalo said someone watched from the shadows as he was beaten. Wu’s killer had help. Two men in black sweatshirts. Most truck drivers would know how to operate a bulldozer, and could arrive at the base camp in a small supply truck without raising suspicion. More than a few are former soldiers.”
They watched until dark, studying every truck that entered the compound, watching for those few that had pairs of drivers, then ventured inside after Yates found a hooded windbreaker to cover his features. The American uttered a low choking sound as they opened the door of the cafe to a powerful scent of grease, cabbage, cigarettes, motor oil and burned rice, then followed Shan to a table in the back corner, where they pushed aside dirty dishes and sat with their backs to the wall.
They ordered noodle soup, which was not as bad as Shan expected, and momos, which seemed to be made of cardboard.
“This is your plan?” Yates muttered. “Sit and wait for two drivers to walk up and confess?” He poked at his stale momos. “Of course they might prefer jail to these dumplings.”
“The plan,” Shan said as he spotted a familiar face exiting the cafe, “is for you to stop speaking English and sit here.” Shan grabbed a newspaper from an empty table and tossed it in front of Yates. “Pretend you read Chinese. I’ll be back.”
Shan stayed in the shadows as he exited the building, following the path that led to the latrine at the rear of the complex then stealing around the parked trucks until he reached the mechanics’ workshop at the far side of the complex. The man under the hood of a small truck was too engrossed in his work to notice Shan enter and lean against the workbench behind him.
“Last I saw him,” Shan declared, “your father was sleeping. I think he will make it.” Jomo’s head jerked up so fast it hit the lifted hood of the truck.
“They don’t allow visitors in the garage,” he groused, pulling an oily cloth from his pocket to wipe his hands.
“When I said it wasn’t Public Security who attacked your father you didn’t seem surprised.”
“I can’t afford trouble. I did a year in prison when I was younger. It still could have been the knobs. They hire people sometimes.”
“As informers, yes. But not for that kind of work. For sake of argument, let’s say it was strangers, like your father said. This is the local market for strangers, you might say, full of Tibet’s new nomads. Men looking for a little extra money, who wouldn’t be recognized.”
“Last spring when an avalanche covered one of the roads they put a sign up here and quickly hired twenty drivers for a couple of days.”
Shan nodded. “What was your year away for?”
“A disagreement over the sky.”
“The sky?”
“All my life I walked the town at night and watched the stars, would sit right in the town square and count meteors. Then someone decided to install street lights, those ugly orange vapor lamps. No more stars. I used to spend summers with shepherds when I was a boy. I have always been good at throwing stones.”