Chapter Eighteen

Sungpo was moving for the first time. He held the old man's head in his lap, wiping it with a wet rag, sometimes pausing to drop rice into his mouth, one kernel at a time.

"We tried to get a doctor," Shan said. He felt helpless. "A town doctor." But Dr. Sung had refused. When he had called to beg her to change her mind she had offered an abundance of excuses. She had clinic hours, she said. She had surgery, she said. She wasn't authorized for a military base, she said.

"They told you, didn't they?" he had said to her. "That it was an old lama."

"Why would that make a difference?"

"Because of what happened at the Buddhist school."

In the silence that had followed, Shan wasn't sure if she was still on the line. "An old man is dying," he had pleaded. "If he dies we will have no way to speak to Sungpo. If he dies it may mean another will be wrongly executed. And a murderer will go unpunished."

"I have a surgery," Dr. Sung had said, almost in a whisper.

"Don't give me excuses," Shan had replied. "Just tell me you don't want to." She did not respond. "I realized something the other day in your office," he pressed. "You're not bitter about the world, like you want everyone to think. You're just bitter about yourself."

The line had gone dead.

"Rinpoche," Shan said softly. "I could get tsampa. Tell me what you need to eat." He felt the old man's pulse. It was slow and faint, like the occasional rustle of a feather.

Je's eyes flickered open. "I am not in need," he said with a strength that belied his appearance. "I am looking for a gate. I found doors, but they are locked. I am looking for my door."

"It's only another day. We will have you home after tomorrow."

Je said something, so softly Shan could not hear. It was for Sungpo, who understood, and guided Je's hand to the rosary on his belt. Je began a mantra.

Jigme had been allowed to enter the guardhouse, at Shan's insistence. He had instantly retreated to the darkest corner of the cell. When he returned the rice cup was empty. Shan moved toward the corner. For a moment Jigme blocked his way, looking back and forth from Sungpo, to Je, then relented.

He had constructed a tiny spirit shrine by pushing two headrest stones against the wall and stacking a third on top. Between the bottom stones were half a dozen balls of rice, the pliers from the desk and the wire. They rested on several small bright white papers.

Shan reached to touch the papers and Jigme slapped his hand away.

"The guard, he had them at the desk when I came. Laughed and showed them to Sungpo. Sungpo meditated. The guard threw them into the cell. I gathered them before anyone could see. I must burn them. They are disrespectful."

They weren't papers, Shan saw as he turned them over. They were photographs. They were a dozen photographs, of three different monks with Public Security officials. With a wrenching chill Shan recognized the monks from the pictures in Jao's files. Each of the first three members of the Lhadrung Five was the subject of a series of four frames. First, standing between two officers at his trial. Kneeling on the ground. Then a pistol held eighteen inches behind his skull. Finally, sprawled on the ground, dead, his head at the center of a pool of blood.

With shaking hands, Shan stacked the photos and put them in his pocket.

Sungpo was speaking to Je again. A hoarse wheezing laugh came from the old man. "He says to tell someone we'll need to begin soon," Je explained. Begin? Then Shan understood. Begin the rites for passage of his soul. The old man's eyes wandered toward the cell door and lingered uncertainly upon the figure of Yeshe, then moved languidly on. "When you let it drift sometimes it finds its own way," he murmured, as if a thought had inadvertently found its way to his tongue.

Jigme was at the bars, holding on as though he might otherwise be carried away. "We could ask him to come down from the mountain," he whispered to Shan. "For such a holy man, maybe he would help."

"A healer?" Yeshe asked. "Did you find a healer?"

"He's hungry, that horse-headed one," Jigme said with a hollow tone. "Okay, let him eat me. I don't care. Maybe then you can talk with him, maybe then he'll help you save Sungpo."

Instantly Shan was at his side, pulling him from the bars. "You found him? You found Tamdin?"

There was a cave, Jigme finally confessed, where the demon slept. "The hand of the demon was gone, but the old man we brought from the market knew the prayers well. Only villagers and herders came at first. But then one came from above, stepping down the mountain like a goat, on a path no wider than a man's hand. He had left the prayer against dogbite, recited a few mantras, and climbed back up the slope. Even without the old man I would have known it was Tamdin's servant. Because of them."

"Them?"

"The vultures. They followed like they were tame, as if they knew he would provide fresh meat for them."

Jigme and Sergeant Feng had followed Tamdin's servant up the treacherous path for over a mile up the slope, into a blind gorge near the top. "When he left with an empty water jug I went in. But Tamdin was in wolf demon form." Jigme pulled up his pant leg to show a jagged, weeping wound on his calf, outlined by a row of punctures. "Hot damn, I run like hell."

"You could find him again?" Yeshe asked excitedly.

Jigme nodded slowly, looking at Je. "Let him eat me, as an offering. I don't care. Sungpo will find me in the next life. Fill his belly, then maybe Tamdin will speak with you. You ask him to come down to the valley, for Rinpoche. But there may not be time. Up that mountain, it is far above the American's shrine. Hard climb."

"No," Shan interjected. "There is an easier way."

"How could you know?" Yeshe asked.

"Because I know where Tamdin's servant came from."

The four men moved over the rocks silently, lost in thought and fear, the wind deviling them, the high altitude sapping their strength. They had found the path where Shan had expected, parallel to the Dragon's Throat, intersecting the road behind the rock formations near the old suspension bridge. It rose precipitously up the North Claw for nearly a mile, then struck a course along the crest of the long ridge.

Jigme, who had insisted on the lead, suddenly dropped to his knees and pointed ahead on the path. "Him!" he gasped. "The servant!"

Feng's hand slipped to his holster. "No," Shan said. "He will do us no harm. Let me speak to him alone."

Shan was sitting alone in a group of boulders, the others hidden on the far side, when the man approached. He was carrying a canvas sack over his shoulder and wore two gau around his neck. He stopped abruptly and squinted at Shan.

"Hello, Chinese."

"I am glad it is you, Merak."

The ragyapa headman nodded as if he understood. "There never was anyone else asking for the charms, was there?" Shan asked.

Merak set the bag down and leaned against the rock beside Shan, his hand on his gau. He seemed relieved to have been discovered. "But who would have believed it? It's not often a ragyapa is able to do great things."

"What is it you do for him?"

"A demon needs much rest. He must be protected while he rests. I was afraid that if I could find him, others might, too."