Tsipon glanced expectantly toward the entry to the building, then frowned. “Known her? I know her. A troublemaker. An agitator from the outside who has no notion of the delicate balance of politics in our world. Last year she started a petition demanding that Beijing send the climbing fees it collects to the mountain villages, abruptly announcing it at the climbing society banquet at the end of the season. She said every cent should be given to rebuild the temples leveled by Beijing so the mountain would be content again and stop taking so many lives. I told her if she wanted people to listen to her speak about temples she was going to have to die and come back as a Buddhist nun.”
“She did die, in my arms, beside Minister Wu.”
Tsipon rolled his eyes. “I read about a particular form of paranoid delusion, imagining that celebrities die in your presence. I know of a hospital near here that could deal with all that ails you,” the Tibetan added with a meaningful gaze, then saw Shan’s insistent expression and shrugged. “You can’t possibly think the death of an American could be kept quiet.”
“Cao has somehow managed to do so. Find someone who has seen her since that day. Anyone.”
“She is secretive. She has people who grant her confidential favors. She doesn’t like the spotlight.”
“You seem to know her well. If she is alive, contact her,” Shan pressed.
Tsipon glanced out the door again before taking another step inside. “I have to get along with all the foreign climbers. They are our lifeblood. Megan Ross has a list of the peaks she wants to climb. A life list she calls it. Did you know there are over twenty peaks of more than twenty thousand feet in this region alone? Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, Sishapangma. And nearly all of them officially closed to foreigners. Sometimes she goes off for a few days and when she returns another mountain is crossed off her list.”
Shan considered the challenge in Tsipon’s eyes. “You mean you help her. You grant her secret favors.”
Tsipon shrugged. “She’s American,” he said, as if it explained much. “She’s been coming here for years, works with that man Yates now, and has influence with all the expedition companies. She needs equipment sometimes. Nothing much. Freeze dried food. Some climbing hardware, most of which she returns. A guide who can keep secrets. Sometimes even a private truck ride in the middle of the night. She pays in dollars. Dollars are very helpful to have. Some of the sherpas from Nepal insist on being paid in dollars.”
“Contact her.”
Tsipon glanced at his watch. “She isn’t stupid. She doesn’t tell me about every trip. And no one will talk even if they know. These are illegal climbs. No permits. No fees. Some are close to military bases.”
A new thought occurred to Shan. “Why would she know the minister of Tourism?” And why, he asked himself, would she have confronted the minister as she was driving up the mountain?
“You need to see a doctor for this disease of yours. She hated what the Minister was doing to the mountain. Ross said the minister acted like she owned Chomolungma. The minister was the enemy to her.”
And that, Shan realized, might have been exactly why Ross had met the minister on the mountain.
Tsipon stepped to a calendar on the wall by the door, lifting a marker from a nearby bookshelf. He put crosses through the past five days. “I need the body of that sherpa. You’ve got one more day. You should be in the mountains.”
Shan kept pressing. “How would a foreigner like Ross get past the Minister’s security?”
“The road was closed. When the minister suggested she go up without an escort, no one objected. She wanted to drive herself, experience the passage up the mountain as a tourist.”
“How do you know that?”
Tsipon offered a sly smile. “Because she borrowed one of the rental cars from the new guesthouse, free of charge.”
“And you,” Shan ventured, “have gone into the rental car business.”
Tsipon smiled again. “I only have a partial interest in the guesthouse. But the car agency is all mine. When I heard she wanted to drive herself, I readily offered our biggest car. The front license plate had an advertisement for the agency. Celebrity promotion.”
Shan gazed with foreboding at the calendar. “How is the prisoner?”
Tsipon looked out the door one more time, then paused, looking down, as if deciding something. “Yesterday they brought in more specialists, from out of town. An ambulance was called to the jail last night. Forget your colonel. I need the dead sherpa. And right now,” he added in a pointed tone, “I need for you to come with me.”
Shan silently straightened the newspapers, considering the many ways Tsipon could be laying a trap for him, then followed.
Outside a black sedan waited, bearing the number plates for a government car from Lhasa. Beside it paced a refined Chinese man, overdressed in a black overcoat and red fox cap.
“Comrade Shan,” Tsipon declared, “I don’t think you have met our distinguished visitor from the capital. Comrade Director Xie of the Bureau of Religious Affairs.”
Shan’s mouth went bone dry. He offered a hesitant nod.
“One of our glorious rehabilitated émigrés,” Xie observed in a polished voice as he reached for Shan’s hand. He made it sound as if Shan had decided to migrate to Tibet for his health. “I have heard about your skills with the local population.”
As Shan retreated a step Tsipon’s hand closed around his arm.
“At work before dawn as usual,” Tsipon declared to Xie, pulling Shan with him toward the car. “Two of the sharpest minds in Tibet gracing our little town at the same time. Great deeds can’t be far behind.” He herded Shan into the rear seat as Xie walked around and climbed in the opposite side, leaving Shan trapped between the two men as the sedan pulled away.
The Snow Leopard Guesthouse was a compact two story building of stucco and wood with a steep roof designed, Shan surmised, to conform to a Chinese concept of an alpine chalet. As the sedan pulled up to its front door the sun burst out through low-hanging clouds to the east, casting a brilliant gold light on snowcapped Chomolungma. Shan walked casually along the front of the building as Tsipon boasted to Xie about his new hotel, proudly pointing out its Western structural features and the adjacent plot they had targeted for expansion with a swimming pool. Shan reached the end of the building, looking around the corner before turning back. The old Jiefang truck was visible at the side of the hotel, two Public Security cars at the back of the parking lot.
Director Xie insisted that the driver take photos of him posing with his new friends with the mountain as a backdrop before following Tsipon inside, past the reception desk, into a private room with a table set for breakfast. The walls in the room were adorned with photographs not of the Himalayan highlands but of Beijing, with one wall bearing nothing but a large airbrushed portrait of the Great Helmsman. The buffet on the sideboard was a cosmopolitan blend of dumplings, rice porridge, pickled vegetables, red bean soup, fried bread, pastries, tea, and coffee. As Director Xie settled into a chair at the head of the table with a cup of coffee and a plate of pastries and vegetables, a solemn middle-aged woman in a dark business suit slipped into the chair at the opposite end. “Madame Zheng from Beijing,” the director offered in introduction.
“It isn’t often we are given an opportunity to so directly serve Beijing,” Tsipon said with an uncertain glance at the woman before turning back to Xie. “Shan will be pleased to tell you all about the local gompas.”
Shan’s hand tightened around his cup of tea.
“The soft spots on our southern underbelly,” Director Xie put in as he lifted a pickle in his chopsticks. “We have long suspected renewed criminal efforts by the Dalai Clique.” Although the government never officially referred to the Dalai Lama by name, this new, more conceptual term had crept into government pronouncements, always the two words together, in the same tone used for the notorious Gang of Four.