“Civic pride,” Shan suggested, “can take many forms.”
Jomo forced a slow, uneasy grin in reply.
“What if I had a special job, no questions asked? What if I wanted two men in black sweatshirts who weren’t afraid of bending the rules?”
The Tibetan turned to the bench, began sorting through a pile of wrenches. “You are the only one in town interested in saving that Chinese colonel.”
“That Chinese colonel didn’t kill Tenzin or Director Xie.”
Jomo shrugged. “Tenzin was from Nepal. And no one cries over Religious Affairs bureaucrats.”
“When the real killer finds out your father is still alive those two men will probably be sent again. If they can’t find him they will start with you.”
The Tibetan lifted a wrench and looked at Shan, as if considering whether to use it on him or the engine. “I have work to do,”
he complained, then bent over the engine again.
“If you don’t choose a side,” Shan said, “others will choose it for you.” He retreated, though only around the two vehicles in the bays, where he watched Jomo from the shadows.
After several minutes the Tibetan paused and straightened, looking toward the parking lot. He glanced around the garage, then disappeared behind a crude plank door into what no doubt was a tool storage closet. Shan gave him another minute before he followed.
The door of the closet was ajar. Shan hooked a finger around it and silently pulled it open. Jomo stood between two walls on which tools hung, facing a small workbench that had been cleared of all tools. On it sat a small Buddha, a cheap steel casting with streaks of oil on its face. The Tibetan was placing pieces of sweet biscuits in front of the Buddha, as offerings.
“I was still young when the Red Guard became active,” Shan said to his back. Jomo’s breath caught at the sound of his voice but the Tibetan did not move. “They came to my school and made the students gather up every book in a foreign language. They made us put them in a big pile in the courtyard and said we would have a beautiful cleansing fire the next day. That night I went back to school. I pulled out twenty books of history and poetry and replaced them with twenty books of the Chairman’s essays I took from the classrooms.”
“Did they find out?” Jomo asked in a whisper.
“No. But years later, after we returned from reeducation camps in the country, they found my father with Western books he had kept hidden. Some were those I rescued that day. He died from the beating they gave him. He died holding my hand, smiling at me. I always felt somehow responsible.”
“It’s hard to know the right things to do,” Jomo said, speaking toward the Buddha. “It’s hard to know how to be.”
Shan waited for the rest of the sentence then realized there was no more. “It’s hard to know,” he agreed.
“An old shepherd knew my father,” Jomo said, “before. . before everything happened. As a boy I used to run away every month or two when my father got really drunk, because he would beat me, and the shepherd gave me shelter. He told me about my father the monk, said he had been a good man who came to the herding camps each spring to bless the new lambs. He would sit at their campfires and recite sutras and the old poems for hours, then sing songs with the herding families. He said no matter what my father did, that was the man I should see in my mind, that he had been a very holy man, probably would have become the abbot when he got older, that the holy man was just lost inside him somewhere.”
“I have a friend who is a lama,” Shan whispered. “He says the holy things are still everywhere, just harder to see. Consider it a test, he says.”
They stared at the little steel Buddha. Shan found a walnut in his pocket and put it with the other offerings.
“It’s a green truck,” Jomo suddenly declared. “One of the big heavy ones. Some of those with two drivers keep going through the night, switching drivers. But when those two stop for gas they usually park with the rigs that spend the night here. Sometimes they pay for women in the back where the cots are. Sometimes they walk down the road as if to meet someone. Sometimes their rig stays parked for twenty-four hours. They’re due tonight.”
“How would they know when to go meet someone?”
“Some kind of signal I think. Sometimes just before dusk I see a yellow bucket turned upside down at the side of the road, a hundred yards before the turnoff. They’re always angry, often drunk. They’d rather stab you than look at you.” He turned back toward his makeshift altar and touched the top of the Buddha as if for a blessing, and said no more.
Yates, restless as ever, did not need to hear Shan’s news. As Shan passed the closest truck to the teashop entrance the American pulled him into the shadows and pointed toward the fuel pumps. Two tall, square men clad in black sweatshirts were fueling and cleaning the cab of a large green truck.
“Christ, they’re huge,” Yates muttered.
“Manchurians,” Shan ventured. One of the men paced along the tires, hitting them with a wooden baton.
“So now what?” Yates asked. “Make a citizen’s arrest? Stand in front of their truck until they confess?”
“You are going to wait while I go inside,” Shan replied. “And when I return you are going to cover your face, walk behind me, and not say a word.”
The man with the baton jumped on the running board and the truck began to move, easing into the ranks of vehicles parked for the night.
Yates did not protest, kept his eyes on the men who climbed off of the truck as Shan darted toward the teashop. Inside, he checked through a window that Yates had not moved then asked for a telephone. Five minutes later the American followed Shan in the direction of the green truck. Shan did not aim directly at the truck, but at two strangers who sat at a concrete table at the edge of the gravel parking lot, playing mah-jongg by the light of a lantern. Shan stepped into the circle of light. “We’ve got good artifacts,” he announced in a loud voice. “The real thing. Triple your money in Shigatse or Lhasa.”
The men at the table looked up in surprise then cast worried glances toward the green truck. “The real thing,” Shan repeated. “We control the artifact trade in this town.” He watched the truck, saw movement in its shadows. When he looked back the two men had disappeared, leaving their tiles and lantern still on the table.
A rough, seething voice emerged from the darkness before Shan could make the black shape moving toward him. “You have shit,” the man spat. “You have nothing for sale!” Another shape appeared, brandishing a tire baton.
“Everything is for sale,” Shan replied, “Opportunity abounds, for one yellow bucket. What’s the price of bulldozing a man into a stone wall?”
They sprang like cats, swinging their batons. Shan sidestepped the first assault and Yates charged into the second man with a shoulder to his chest, knocking him to the ground. But the batons moved with determination. A blow to the back of his head knocked Yates to his knees. For every swing Shan dodged, another connected with his arms and back. Yates was on the ground, the second man straddling him, the baton swept back for a bone-crushing blow, when the headlights of a moving truck illuminated the American’s head, no longer covered by his hood.
“Bai ren!” the man spat. Foreigner! The baton froze in midair, the man’s partner muttered a curse, and as quickly as they had appeared, they were gone.
Shan and Yates, numb from the encounter, sat on the gravel, blood trickling down the American’s cheek as the green truck, its trailer unhitched, revved its engine and began rolling away.
“That went well,” Yates observed dryly in English as he rubbed his head.
Shan, looking up as he finished writing the license plate number of the truck on his forearm, wanted to say it had gone as well as could be expected, when he saw the green truck stop. The driver spoke with a man at the fuel pumps. A figure moved in front of Shan, blocking his view. It was Jomo, his face full of fear, his mouth opening and shutting as if he could not find the words he meant to say.