“A protector charm,” came Ama Apte’s voice. She had approached Jin again, was only a few feet from his back.
“The night before those police came,” the young monk explained in an earnest voice, “our abbot went into his chambers and made this, speaking words of power over it. He only had time to make three. If he had made more, the others would be safe now.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” the older driver demanded.
“The charm,” Shan said with foreboding, “is against injury from demons.” He remembered his first confrontation with the monks in the depot tent, how frightened they had been of him, how they had clutched their gaus.
A frown creased Jin’s face as he stared at the charm.
“Fuck your mother!” the young Manchurian spat, and lunged for the constable’s gun.
As Jin dodged, Ama Apte leaped at the truck driver, pushing his arm down, causing him to twist about, slamming her shoulder with a fist, knocking her down so she gripped his legs. Then, strangely weakened, she let go. For a moment they all froze, looking at the Tibetan woman in confusion. Then she twisted, her hand to her shoulder, and they could see the knife embedded in her flesh.
Kypo, nearest the man who had stabbed her, crouched, about to spring, but then with a blur of motion Yates was on the man, hammering with his fists, slamming a knee into the man’s belly as he doubled over, clenching his fists together and pounding them into his head. As the Manchurian crumpled to the ground Shan prepared to block the attack of his companion. But suddenly Jin’s gun was aimed at the older Manchurian.
“I am the constable of this township, damn it!” he shouted in an uncertain tone. “No more!” He swung his gun back toward Shan and Yates. “But we are taking these monks with us.”
“No,” Shan stated. “Your new friends are just leaving. They have less than twenty-four hours left.”
“Twenty-four hours?” Jin asked as the older driver pulled his gasping companion to his feet.
“Go down with them and try to collect a bounty and you’ll be arrested. Public Security knows about the yellow bucket that summons them, and has the license number of their truck. Law enforcement isn’t as efficient as people think. It takes about twenty-four hours for the ownership and drivers of a commercial vehicle to be verified. Major Cao will have sent in the information just after daybreak. By this time tomorrow every border station, every police officer in Tibet will be watching for that truck.” He spoke to the Manchurians now. “Your only chance is to leave Tibet before then. That’s a lot of hard driving, but you might make it. Get out of Tibet and keep going. Mongolia always needs trucks.”
“Not without what we came for!” the older man snarled.
“When they catch you,” Shan replied in a level voice, “they will separate you. One of you is guaranteed a bullet in the head.”
“One?” the younger driver asked.
“They will work on you both, separately, with wires and blades and mechanics tools, later with chemicals. The one who talks first, providing evidence against the other, will get fifteen or twenty years’ hard labor. The other will be executed in less than two weeks. One of you will talk, it’s just a matter of which one.” Shan fixed the man with a meaningful gaze. “You’re still young, you can make a new life after fifteen years.”
The two Manchurians glanced at each other uneasily.
Shan looked up at the sun. “Of course by the time you get back to your truck you’ll have maybe twenty hours.”
“Fuck your mother,” the older man spat again.
Shan said nothing, just pointed at the man’s companion, who had begun running toward the passageway down the mountain.
As he watched the second man disappear into the rocks a frightened moan rose from beside him. Jin too had been watching the fleeing Manchurians, had ignored Ama Apte, lying on the ground beside him. The Tibetan woman, a long stain of blood spreading down her sleeve, had struggled to her feet. She was suddenly behind Jin, the switchblade at his throat. She grabbed the gun from the terrified constable and tossed it to Kypo. Her son quickly popped out the magazine, walked closer to the gully and tossed it in, then threw the gun into the rocks near the passageway. Jin’s face twisted in confusion as Ama Apte released him. He looked at the monks, then at Shan, as if help. “This fortuneteller is crazy!” the constable gasped.
“Before she was a fortuneteller,” Shan observed, “she was a soldier for the Dalai Lama.”
Ama Apte grinned, then loosened her grip to let Jin slide away.
“We’re going to have some food,” Shan announced to the crestfallen constable, gesturing his companions to the smoldering fire of goat dung and old crate fragments. Jin cursed and peevishly walked in the opposite direction.
“I can’t believe you let the Manchurians run away like that,” Yates complained as the others moved to the fire.
“I told them it would take twenty-four hours to track their truck’s papers. At most it will take twelve. They might get a few hours’ north of Lhasa, that’s all.”
They ate in an unsteady silence, Kypo tending his mother’s wound, which had begun to bleed profusely. “She has to go down to the lower elevation, to the village,” Yates said.
Shan nodded agreement, then began silently checking the soles of the monks’ boots.
“What are you doing?” the American asked.
“She has to go down,” Shan said. “But they cannot.”
With a grimace Yates looked up at the rough icebound landscape above them, then glanced at the climbing equipment they had left by the gully. “There’s a hundred ways to die up there.”
“The trail on your map goes all the way over,” Shan pointed out, with an expectant glance at Kypo.
The Tibetan nodded. “It’s the route of the sherpas who come across without papers. Tenzin took it last month. There’s a cliff on the Nepal side but it has a hidden goat path down it.”
“There’re border patrols,” Yates argued. “Helicopters that drop off snipers.”
“And there’s also fog and heavy wind and snow squalls. We can deal with the weather better than they can.”
“These monks don’t know anything about climbing,” Yates said, shifting to English.
“They seem to know,” Shan replied, “a lot about surviving. They have to go now. More will come for them.”
Ama Apte spoke from her seat on a rock, obviously struggling against the pain of her wound. “The mother mountain watches. She will protect you.”
Yates stared at the Tibetan woman for a long silent moment then stepped to her, cradled her in both of his arms before turning to Shan. “The mother mountain will protect us,” he repeated, then pulled out his map. “But I don’t know how far it is. And it’s nearly twenty thousand feet at that pass. We have no oxygen.”
“I came across that way,” the youngest monk declared, “years ago. I was born in Nepal. From here it is maybe four hours, no more.”
Shan studied the towering glacier with foreboding. It was a killing field, with crevasses covered with brittle windblown crusts, jagged spires of ice, expanses of treacherous, loose scree. We should rest first, he was about to say, when he spotted Jin standing on one of the flat outcroppings near the edge of the little plateau. He had taken out his much reviled radio, and was speaking into it. Jin might not get a bounty for turning in the monks to Public Security, but he would gain enough glory for the promotion and transfer he so desperately wanted.
“Go!” Shan shouted to the monks, pulling the youngest to his feet and pointing toward the distant pass. “He’s calling in soldiers!”
By the time Yates and Shan had hurried Kypo and Ama Apte to the passageway and gathered up their equipment the monks were already past the winding gravel path that led to the ice and were on the glacier itself. Shan cast a worried glance at Kypo and his mother, then ran desperately to catch up with the monks, fearful that one would fall and break a bone, ending all chance of escape. He had reached them and was explaining how they must use ropes to connect themselves when the crack of a gunshot split the thin, chill air.