“Afraid?”

“I told her I wasn’t afraid of who they were, but of what they did. I told her that if the shrines were ignored, more and more climbers would die. I said dead foreigners were accumulating all over the upper slopes, with no one to pray for them, no one to help them make the passage to the next life. She helped me clean up the shrine, and when she saw that the prayer flags were old and tattered she said she would give me money for some new ones. I explained it wasn’t money that made flags valuable, that these scraps of cloth were holy for having sent out a million prayers, one with each flutter. It was only when she helped me tighten the line and straighten the flags that she really understood. Half the line was empty.”

“Because foreigners had been taking the flags for souvenirs.”

Ama Apte nodded. “She asked Kypo about me, not knowing then that I was his mother, and she found me here the next week, to tell me she arranged for the climbing groups to delete that particular trail from their route maps. That’s when she began asking me how Tibetans went up the mountains in the old days.”

“Did you know she was trying to meet with the minister?”

“She comes every week or two during the climbing season. Last time she told me she was going to attend the conference at that new hotel. She said they needed what she called a dose of reality, as if she would give it to them like a pill.”

“You mean she was going to stop the minister from doing something?”

The fortuneteller decided to change the subject. “Have you found the answer for my mule?” she asked abruptly. “If he is not settled, things could go badly,” she added, as if she were now telling the fortunes of ghosts.

“To find your uncle’s killer,” Shan explained, “I need to know more about your way to the mother goddess. When I needed to carry bodies, Kypo always met me with the mule below Rongphu gompa, on the trail that parallels the road from the base camp. The mule knew the trail instinctively.”

“He walked it for over eighty years, in both his lives.”

“But that is a trail that winds down toward the highway. The way from the village to that trail is cut off by the steepness of Tumkot mountain and the glacier on top of the mountain. But Kypo and the mule seemed to know a way across.”

“Ridiculous. We go around, on a trail that circuits the base of the high ridge.”

“To go around to the road means walking at least fifteen miles. To go over the top would be no more than five.”

“Fifteen miles is a morning stroll for one of us.”

“But suppose there was a secret trail,” Shan suggested. “Your mule would know it as the way home, would lead anyone to it who cared to follow, because he would make fresh tracks that would highlight the trail. If the murderer also used such a secret trail to do his work he would want the mule dead.”

“There were many cars and trucks going up and down the road that day after the killing. So many army trucks they had no room for an ambulance,” she said in a pointed tone.

“But there was an injured man,” Shan observed. “That bus driver.”

Ama Apte cast him a disappointed glance. Shan thought again of the photo of the young Dalai Lama with soldiers. It hadn’t been ripped from a book or newspaper. It had been an original photograph. Every time he peeled one layer of the woman’s secrets he found one more.

“I thought you were going to tell me how that Chinese colonel killed my uncle, like the minister.”

“I came to find out the truth.”

“It’s a strange way you have with the truth.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You act as though someone from Tumkot was the killer.”

“Your uncle was shot less than a mile from here. Maybe he was scared away by the bullets, and was coming home.”

“My uncle knew bullets. He would have told me, and told Tenzin.”

“Tenzin?” he asked with rising foreboding. “Tenzin was dead.”

“I thought you would better understand the dead here,” she said in a tone that sent chills down Shan’s spine.

“Is that why I am the corpse carrier? Dakpo saw what I did with a dog and the two of you assumed I knew the dead?”

Ama Apte fixed him with a sober stare. “Dakpo spoke with me, yes. But I had to meet you first. Right away, I saw it in your eyes. You are one of those the dead speak through. The threads of your life become entwined with the dead you touch.”

It took a long time for Shan to respond. “But Tenzin was dead,” he tried once more.

“I told you. The mountain needed him again, so Tenzin rose up and rode my mule away.”

Ama Apte cut off any response from Shan with a challenging gaze, then reached into the sleeve of her dress and extracted her Mo dice. Oblivious to Shan now, she closed her eyes, her lips moving in the short mantra that evoked the wisdom of the Mo, then tossed the dice onto the packed earth. She studied them a moment, then scooped them up and turned to Shan with an apologetic expression. “Only sorrow can come of it,” she declared, then stood, straightening her apron, signaling that her hospitality had been exhausted. Shan watched as she climbed the ladder stair to the upper story. Again she had told him the answer, but she had not told him the question.

Chapter Seven

The Shogo town infirmary was mostly an aid station used more often than not for tourists who needed relief from an attack of altitude sickness or mending of sprains and minor broken bones after tumbling off a rock. It was a small, shabby affair, housed in a rundown former army barracks at the edge of town, its only remotely new adornments the bright metal sign on the door marked EMERGENCY in Chinese, English, German and Japanese and a banner reading EMBRACE POLITICAL STABILITY, a favorite of Party sloganeers since the 2008 uprisings. After watching the street behind him in the mirror for nearly a minute, Shan parked the old blue truck at the curb, then climbed the crumbling concrete steps and took a tentative step inside.

At a reception counter a plump woman sat on a stool, her head cradled on her folded arms, fast asleep. Beside her on the counter were racks of faded brochures in half a dozen languages about the symptoms and treatment of altitude sickness. Behind her were wooden shelves with more than a score of small oxygen bottles fitted with breathing masks, under a sign that proclaimed the bottles to be the property of Tingri County. Past the counter were two cots with folded blankets, for those who had to take their oxygen lying down. Beyond them a single wooden door with peeling red paint was flanked by glossy posters advertising the Chinese International Travel Service. Shan went to the door, glanced at the sleeping woman as she emitted a loud snore, and pushed it open.

Only one of the six beds in the dusty, poorly lit chamber was occupied. At first, from the patient’s strange jerking motions, Shan suspected the young Chinese man lying on it, knees folded up, had suffered some sort of nerve damage. But by the time he reached the bed he could see the little black box in the man’s hands, could hear the dim pinging noises as he feverishly worked the buttons. Shan studied him in silence a moment, taking in the bandage on his crown, the short line of incisions on his temple, then noticed the uniform hanging on a peg by the bed.

Not until Shan had pulled a stool close to the bed and sat down did the patient take notice. His fingers stopped in midair. The color drained from his face. The game box dropped onto his blanket.

Shan gestured to the bandage on his head. “There seems to be no permanent damage.”

The soldier took a long time to find his tongue. “I didn’t. . ” he stammered. “I wasn’t. .”

“There was a lot of confusion that day,” Shan suggested.

The young Chinese straightened up against the metal headboard, nervously examining Shan, noticeably relaxing as he saw his worn pants, his tattered hiking boots.