Shan gazed, uncomprehending, at the parchment, turning it over, finding only spots of age on the reverse side. It was easily a century old, probably much more. He looked inside the package, finding nothing, then sniffed it. It had contained a strong, unfiltered brand, not the kind smoked by the minister. He rolled the paper again and was putting it back into its container when he saw words scrawled on the inside of the folding top. Eight o’clock tonight, the note said, nothing more.
He quickly checked the rest of the chamber and the bathroom finding more of the minister’s expensive accoutrements, then returned to the bedside drawer. The cigarette package and page would have seemed like trash to anyone else in the hotel but the minister had placed them on a silk handkerchief and kept them by her bed. He closed the drawer then opened it one more time. The prayer rolled up like a cigarette filled him with foreboding.
Moments later he was outside, the ladder stowed away, surveying the parking lot again for watchers. Finding none, he went to the largest of the rental cars, in the rear of the cinderblock garage, a gray sedan with a yellow Public Security warning sticker on its windscreen and gray tape in a large X pattern sealing the driver’s door. Before taking a step closer, Shan rummaged in the mechanic’s bag and extracted a roll of similar duct tape, which he waved as he approached Kypo.
The Tibetan’s face drained of color. “If they found us touching that car they would leave us attached to the battery charger all night.”
“Which is why you are going to stand at the entrance to the garage and honk one of the car horns if you glimpse any uniform coming in this direction. If they ask why, it is because you are testing the rental cars.” Shan hesitated a moment before turning back to the car, wondering why it was Kypo not Jomo, the mechanic, who was working on the cars that day.
He worked quickly, stripping off the tape, opening the door to examine the seat, the seat belt, the position of the adjustable steering wheel, before slipping in behind the wheel. Minister Wu had driven her own car, Tsipon had said, spurning any escort. Shan tested his own legs in reaching the foot pedals, stretching to reach them. The car had been towed there, and he could rely on the knobs to have sense enough not to tamper with the interior. But he had seen the woman, knew that the minister was shorter than Shan. Someone else, not the minister, had last driven the car.
He opened the front passenger’s door, again examining the seat then, with a piece of the tape wrapped around his fingers, adhesive side outward, lightly brushed the fabric of the seat and headrest, picking up nothing but dirt and lint. He paused, glancing at Kypo at the entrance, then opened the rear door and repeated the process with new tape, quickly finding several black hairs on one side of the rear seat, then several blond hairs on the other. He stared at the hairs, the first tangible evidence that he not imagined the dead American. But he had been wrong to assume she had intruded, had been lying in wait for the minister. She had been in the car, riding up the mountain with Wu.
The rest of the vehicle offered nothing else except two cigarette butts in the rear ashtray, bearing smudges of dark lipstick. He sniffed the cigarettes. Menthol again.
“Who else was in this car just before the minister took it?” he asked as Kypo helped him tape the door again.
“No one. Tsipon said save it for her, clean it like new before she arrived. Put in some peaches.”
“Peaches?”
“She was from Beijing. He read in a book somewhere about how the imperial family always liked peaches. So Tsipon ordered a little basket of peaches from Shigatse for her.”
“Were you here to present the car to the minister?”
“Not me. Tsipon wouldn’t let any of us near her. She was like a visiting deity. He probably had the hotel manager do it.”
Shan paced slowly around the car. “Guests can charge a car to their hotel account?”
Kypo nodded.
“How do you know if they are registered at the hotel?”
“They send a list each morning from the front desk. Guests get special rates.”
“What happens to the list?”
“The hotel has only been open two weeks. No one’s going to worry about filing until piles of paper cover the desk.”
Two of the guest lists Shan sought were hidden under a repair manual, the third, covered with stains of grease and tea, lay beside a bulky cloth-draped object. The day of the killing, and for two days before, Minister Wu had been booked as a guest. Colonel Tan had arrived the day before the killing. Megan Ross’s name appeared nowhere, though the American Yates had been a guest the night before the murders, when there had been a banquet to launch the tourism conference.
Shan studied the vehicles in the garage. “How many other cars are there?”
“These three. But Tsipon is arranging for more vehicles. He’s betting big on tourism. Last week I found him looking over brochures for apartments in Macau.”
“What kind of vehicles?”
“Utility vehicles mostly, for climbers and base camp organizers. When my grandfather took climbers, they walked with packs for miles, from the highway to Rongphu gompa to sit with the gods before climbing. It’s no wonder so many die today.”
Shan studied the Tibetan, wondering whether he meant it was the long acclimatizing trek or the worshipping that saved lives, then noticed the cloth-draped object again. He had assumed it was an engine part under repair. But now he saw a small naked foot protruding from the oil-stained cloth.
Kypo, noticing Shan’s gaze, sprang into action, turning out the desk light, taking a step toward the old blue truck that waited for them, suggesting they leave. Shan gestured for him to lead and stood as if to follow, then flung off the cloth.
The bronze statue of Yama, the Lord of Death, was perhaps eight inches tall, atop a heavy base set with a ring of turquoise stones.
“Is this the secret of Tsipon’s success, a god in every car?”
Kypo muttered a curse and trotted to the bench, lifting the cloth to cover the figure again. “It’s nothing, just an old thing that nobody cares about.”
“It’s one of the stolen statues.”
“Not stolen. They’re wandering back now.” Kypo, like many Tibetans Shan knew, tended to speak of their deities as if they were members of their households.
“You’re saying the thief is bringing them back?”
“More or less. The first one that went missing was found on the doorstep of an old weaver at the edge of the village, a couple days ago. Half a dozen were taken from the village, and most have been brought back now. Found on a doorstep, in a hay manger, one inside a butter churn, one down at the flour mill.”
“Sort of a Yama scavenger hunt,” Shan mused. “But surely this one wasn’t returned here.”
“No. But I need to fix it before my mother sees it. She would call it an omen, that this happened to one of deities from the altar behind her house.”
“One?”
Kypo nodded. “There was a much older, more valuable statue of Tara, the goddess, beside the Yama. But only the Yama was taken. Then last night he came back, left on the wall behind my house. He was changed like the others,” Kypo added in a voice full of worry. “Her altar is special, people come there from all over the village. She might tell the villagers something through her dice that-” Kypo stopped, glancing uneasily at Shan. What was he saying about his mother’s use of her astrological powers?
“What do you mean the statues were changed?”
“When an old man down the road had his statue returned, he told her something inside had been released, said no one should insult Uncle Shinje this way,” Kypo said. “She was upset when he showed her. I found her in her house crying,” he added, confusion entering his voice. “She is the strongest woman I know, and she was crying over someone’s little god.”